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SHAKSPER NOT 
SHAKESPEARE 



WILLIAM H. EDWARDS 

Author of " The Butterflies of North America," 
"A Voyage up the River Amazon," etc. 



Cttitb portraits and ■Fac-similes 



IvKT EVERY TUB STAND ON ITS OWN BOTTOM 

— Apt Proverb 



CINCINNATI 

THE ROBERT CIvARKE COMPANY 

1900 



tjciruji 4. 



n 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

Library of Ceiigrei% 
Office of the 

Uegl»t«r of Copyrlgbtf^ 




Copyright, 1900, 

BY 

THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY, 
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. 



H:RaT COPY, 



51 %% 



' ' The life of Shakspere is a fine mystery, and I 
tremble every day lest something should turn up.'' 

— Chari^ks Dicke;ns. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



It is full time that reasonable men should re-exam- 
ine the evidences on which they have beheved that an 
illiterate butcher, from an ignorant and bookless in- 
land village, who flew to lyondon in disgrace before 
the constable, and became a servitor, and later, a plaj'-er 
at a public theater, the then most degraded place of 
amusement, and who spent the greater part of every 
year in strolling through England with his troupe of 
comedians, sat himself down, and without preparation 
or knowledge, dashed off Hamlet, — and not only Ham- 
let, but nearly two score of the world's greatest plays. 
This exploit is so discordant with the facts of the 
man's life and environment, that his ablest and most 
authoritative biographer is obliged to suggest that 
these plays were written ' 'without effort' ' ; that is, 
without study or equipment, "by inspiration, not by 
design' ' , thus making of the Bard of his admiration, 
as he never wearies of calling him, a species of literary 
Blind Tom. He certainly did write by inspiration, if 
he wrote at all, for in his uninspired moments he pos- 
sessed not one accomplishment or characteristic that 
would help him to the writing of a play of any sort, — 

Cv) 



vi INTRODUCTORY. 

not even tlie manual art of writing. Another biogra- 
pher, of high authority, tells us that this man wrote 
the plays simply to fill the theater and his own 
pockets — not because, as a poet, he was compelled to 
sing. In the pages to follow, I assert and prove that 
the Shakespeare plays were not written for William 
Shaksper's theater, and that no one of them was ever 
played at his theater, except in special scenes, or in 
pantomime; and also that no man, during his lifetime, 
attributed the plays to "William Shaksper, or suspected 
him of any authorship whatever. I assert and prove 
that, until the issue of the First Folio of the Collected 
Plays, in 1623, years after the death of William Shak- 
sper, these plays, singly or collectively, had no repu- 
tation whatever; that they were not comprehended by 
the people, learned or unlearned, of that age; and that 
they are but just now, after a lapse of three hundred 
years, beginning to be comprehended. The Shaksper 
myth originated in the verses of Ben Jonson prefixed 
to the Folio, written as a paid advertisement, and in 
the bitterest ridicule of William Shaksper and the pre- 
tensions set up for him by the syndicate of publishers: 
also in the lying testimony, in the same Folio, which 
Heminge and Condell, Shaksper's ignorant fellow- 
players, are made by some unknown writer to stand 
sponsors for. I show that he died as devoid of ac- 
complishments as when he entered I^ondon, — ^unknown 



INTRODUCTORY. vil 

to any man of letters or of eminence, unnoticed and 
unlamented. The English speaking world has been 
humbugged in this matter long enough, but the labors 
of Halliwell-Phillipps, of Ingleby, and Furnivall, and 
Fleay, at length enable us to know exactly what Wil- 
liam Shaksper did do, and what he did not do. He 
made, and stuck to, and left behind him, a great heap 
of money, and that was the sole achievement of his 
fifty-two years on this planet. Began poor, died 
rich — ^which a Harvard professor, another biographer, 
thinks was as wonderful a feat as the writing of the 
Shakespeare plays. It is enough for me to prove that 
William Shaksper did not write these plays. Who 
did, I know not, and offer no suggestions; but when 
the venerable Shaksper image has tumbled, and the 
critics have a little ti,me to clear their eyes of dust and 
cobwebs, the real authors may be discovered, — authors, 
for I believe there were several associates who wrote 
under the assumed name of "William Shakespeare." 

Wii,i<iAM H, Kdwards. 



CONTENTS. 



The Proposition, , i 

The; Demonstration, . . . . . , , i 



PART I. 

I. The Family of William Shaksper, 
II. As to the House in which John Shaksper Lived 

III. The School advantages of. the Boy William, 

IV. The Youth of William Shaksper, . 
V. Whither? 

VI. The Life of William on entering London, 
VII. The Theaters in London, 
VIII. William Shaksper's Thirst for Wealth, . 
IX. The Testimony of the Plays, . 



7 
i6 
20 

33 
40 

49 
94 

177 

193 



PART II. 

X. References to Shakespeare, Author or Works, or 

to the Player, Shaksper, or Shakspere, , . 259 

XI. The First Folio, 304 

XII. Heminge and Condell, 350 

XIII. The Sonnets, , - . 365 

XIV. Last years at Stratford, and death of Shaksper, . 375 
XV. That William Shaksper never learned to write, . 385 

XVI. Further evidence of the ignorance of contempo- 
raries respecting William Shaksper, . . . 413 
XVII. Absence of allusions to Stratford-on-Avon, or to 
Warwickshire, m the Plays; the Authors unob- 
servant of Nature, ...... 430 

XVIII. Views of the Baynes School, 438 

(ix) 



CONTENTS. 



XIX. Views of the Phillipps School; of Fleay and some 
other commentators, 
XX. The Smattering, Picking-tip School, 
XXI. The Ivikenesses of William Shaksper, 
XXII. A Suggestion, .... 

XXIII. The Summing Up, 



449 
453 
464 
4S6 
491 



I.IST OF II.LUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

I. Fac-simile of John Shaksper's name, . . 8 

2-4. Other styles of same, .... 8 

5. Same, with terminal German r, . . .9 

6. Another, with open German terminal r, . . 9 

7. Same, with terminal e following the German r, . 9, 10 

8. The real boy Shaksper, .... 26 

9. Rolfe's notion of boy Shaksper, . . .27 

10. William Kemp, Shaksper's Instructor in Comedy, 60 

11. Richard Tarleton, another clown of same Company, 61 

12. Interior of the Swan Theater, 1596 . . .106 

13. William Shaksper's pretended signature to deed, 

from Malone, ..... 387 

14. The same, Boston Library version, . . 390 

15. The pretended signature to a mortgage, Boston Li- 

brary version, ..... 39^ 

16. The five pretended signatures. Deed, Mortgage, and 

Will, after Drake, . . . . .392 

17. Malone's copy of the three Will signatures, . 394 

18. Same, enlarged, ..... 395 

19. Second and third of the Will signatures, Boston Li- 

brary version, ..... 396 

20. The letters a, k, s, p, of the three Will signatures, 

Malone, . . . . . .398 

21. The three Will signatures, from Lee, . . 400 

22. Fac-simile of the name John Shaksper, . . 405 

23. The counterfeit signature of William Shaksper in the 

Florio Montaigne, . . . . .411 

24. The Droeshout likeness of William Shaksper, , 465 

25. The Flower Portrait of William Shaksper, . . 469 

26. Macmonnies' Statue of William Shaksper, . 472 

27. The Stratford Bust, . . . . .474 

28. The Kasselstadt Death Mask of no one knows whom, 482 

29. Lord Ronald Gower's composition likeness of Will- 

iam Shaksper, at Stratford, .... 484 

(xi) 



SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE, 



THE PROPOSITION. 

That William Shaksper could not have written the 
"Shakespeare" poems and plays. 

"It must either be shown that Bacon did actually 
write them, in which case Shaksper was not their 
author, or that Shakspere could not possibly have written 
them, in which case somebody else must have done so." 
Alfred Russel Wallace, IvX.D., F.R.S., etc., etc., in 
the Arena, July, 1893. 

"The whole case seems to lie in this: that the bur- 
den of proving that Shakspere did not write the works 
rests upon those who say he did not write them, and 
as yet these persons have not submitted an item of 
proof." ("Ivistener"), Boston Transcript, 6th No- 
vember, 1897. 

THE DEMONSTRATION. 

I propose to show that William Shaksper, often 
called Shakspere, could not possibly have written the 
works attributed to him under the name of ' 'William 
Shakespeare", or "Shake-speare" , in which case, ac- 
cording to Dr. Wallace, "somebody else must have 
done so". It matters not who that somebody was. 
The poems and plays are in evidence that, in the time 
of Elizabeth and James, there lived one man or several 
men who wrote them; but that the man was the player 
whose family name was ' 'Shaksper' ' , and whose name 
is appended to a deed and a mortgage "Shaksper" 
and "Shakspar" and three times to a will "Shaksper", 



5 shaksp:sr not shakb;sp:^ar:^. 

there is no evidence; there is nothing but inference, 
conjecture, unwarranted assumption and baseless 
(though general) reputation. During his life of fifty- 
two years none of his relations, neighbors, or intimates, 
and none of his contemporaries, testified that this man 
was the author of these works. The story originated 
after his death — in mockery, and gathered strength as 
the years went by, for the simple reason that originally 
nobody cared for the Shakespeare plays, or who wrote 
them. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, 
when all who had known anything of the matter had 
passed away, the legend received a fresh impetus from 
certain antiquarians and story-tellers; and when, two 
generations ago, some one bethought him of looking 
into the matter, the whole world was attributing the 
plays to illiterate William Shaksper. A great deal of 
investigation has been going on during these last 
years, and as the result, I undertake to show that the 
possibilities and facts are all against the Stratford 
man. I propose also to satisfy the requirement of 
the lyistener of the Transcript. 

I shall ground my arguments largely on citations 
from the 9th (and last) edition of Mr. J. O. Halliwell- 
Phillipps' "Outlines of the lyife of Shakespeare," I^on- 
don, 1890, and Dr. C. J. Ingleby's "Centurie of 
Prayse", 2d edition, edited by Miss I^ucy Toulmin 
Smith, 1879. 

Mr. F. G. Fleay, one of the most eminent of the 
Shakespearian scholars, says: "The documents on 
which the facts of his (William Shaksper's) private 
life are founded have been excellently well collected 
and arranged in the Outlines, etc., by Mr. Phillipps. 
This book is a treasure house of documents, and it is 



the; proposition. 3 

greatly to be regretted tliat they are not published by 
themselves". 

The suggestion of Mr. Fleay seems to have been 
acted on by Mr. Daniel W. Wilder, who in 1893, at 
Boston, published "The lyife of Shakespeare (Shak- 
sper) compiled from the best sources without Com- 
ment' ' . He copies word for word all the facts given 
by Mr. Phillipps, 8th edition. Mr. Wilder says in his 
preface: "Mr. Phillipps' studies embraced the whole 
field of our earlier literature. . . . Gradually he 
came to concentrate himself upon Shakespeare (Shak- 
sper) alone, and more particularly upon the facts of 
his life' ' . The other work, ' 'The Centurie of Prayse' ' , 
with its supplement by Dr. F. J. Furnivall, 1886, is the 
result of a painstaking search through all English lit- 
erature, poets, prose writers, records of every de- 
scription, from diaries and note books to the records of 
the Master of the Revels, (as to the names of the 
plays supposed to be Shakespeare's acted before the 
court). Private correspondence has everywhere been 
examined for a mention of either player Shaksper, or 
author Shakespeare, or allusions to the Shakespeare 
works; and all this for a period of one hundred years, 
beginning soon after the arrival at London of the 
player, and soon after the first appearance of the 
Shakespeare Plays. 

Every mention of either player or author or allusion 
or reference to works for one hundred years by any- 
body which has come down from that age, with two or 
three exceptions to be hereafter noted, is given in this 
valuable book. 

I shall also cite Richard Grant White's Memoirs 
prefixed to his edition of the "Complete Works of 



4 SHAKSPEJR NOT SHAKKSPEJARE). 

William Shakespeare"; and the same author's Studies 
in Shakespeare" ; and "Knglan(i Without and Within", 
etc.; Drake's "Shakespeare and His Times", London, 
1817; J. P. Collier's "Life of Shakespeare, and His- 
tory of the English Stage to the time of Shakespeare' ' , 
1843, New York ed., 1853; "Shakespeare's Prede- 
cessors in the English Drama", by J. Addington Sy- 
monds, London, 1884; F. G. Fleay's "Chronicle His- 
tory of the Life and Works of William Shakespeare' ' , 
London, 1886*; and his '-'Chronicle History of the 
English Stage", 1890; Bishop Wordsworth's "Shake- 
speare and The Bible", 3d Ed., London, 1880; Pro- 
fessor Barrett Wendell's "William Shakspere", Bos- 
ton, 1894; Mrs. Dall's, "What we really know about 
Shakespeare", New York, r895; Ruggles', "The Plays 
of Shakespeare founded on Literary Forms", Boston, 
1895; "Our English Homer, or Shakespeare His- 
torically Considered", by Thomas W. White, London, 
1892; Sidney Lee's "Life of William Shakespeare", 
London and New York, i8g8; Do wd en's "Introduction 
to Shakespeare", New York, 1895; Prof. G. L. Craik's 
"English of Shakespeare, and English Literature and 
Language"; and Edwin's "Reed's Bacon vs. Shake- 
spere", Boston, 1897. Also somewhat from Dr. 
Doran's "Annals of the Stage" ; and from the writings 
of the Shakespearian editors, Drs. Rolfe and Furni- 
vall; and rather by way of comment, I shall quote 
from Smith's "Bacon and Shakespeare", London, 
1857; Morgan's "The Shakespearean 'Myth", 3d ed., 
Cincinnati, 1888; Donnelly's "The Great Crypto- 

* The first of these books will be referred to as "Fleay" or 
"Fleay, Ufe", the other as "Fleay, Hist." 



THK PROPOSITION. 5 

gram", Chicago, 1888; and Mrs. Potts' "Did Francis 
Bacon write Shakespeare?", lyondon, 1893. 

Halliwell-Phillipps is the greatest authority on the 
subject of William Shaksper by consent of all Shak- 
sperians. He was a most indefatigable worker, and 
devoted the greater part of his long life and a great 
part of his fortune to collecting the facts relating to 
him of Stratford, under the belief that he was the 
same individual as the author Shakespeare, and in 
searching for documents to illustrate his life. Conse- 
quently we know a vast deal about William Shaksper, 
and about everybody related to him, his grandfather, 
his father, his brothers and sisters, his daughters and 
sons-in-law, "and his cousins and his aunts"; also about 
Stratford-on-Avon. We know of this William from 
his boyhood to his departure for I^ondon, and in 
lyondon and Stratford again to the day of his death 
and then to his burial. We know of him as a player, 
as part proprietor of one or more theaters, as poor, and 
as rich. We have in great detail his business transac- 
tions, his purchase of lands and houses, his deeds and 
mortgages, his business of loaning money, his suits at 
law; his trading in various lines, but surprisingly 7ioth- 
ing whatever concerning any literary employment or pro- 
clivities. A thousand times Mr. Phillipps speaks of 
him as "the great dramatist", or "the bard of our ad- 
miration' ' . Kven in the index he itemizes about ' 'the 
great dramatist". His two large volumes comprise 
nine hundred pages, — and after all, striking out some 
few elegiac verses, or eulogies, from the beginning of 
the successive Folio editions of the Shakespeare Plays, 
for good and sufficient reasons, (which I shall give in 
due time) there is not one line in the whole work that 



6 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPEARB;. 

identifies William Shaksper as the author of the poems 
and plays — not one line. We are made to know about 
him in every aspect but that of author, and there his- 
tory is silent. The biography, therefore, is of no more 
value in the case than would have been that of Robert 
Arden, his grandfather. Mr. Phillipps has carved for 
himself an unbeautiful idol, out of a shaky p/ece of 
timber, and grovels before it as if he were a Polynesian 
or a Hindoo. The waste of time and labor shown by 
his "Outlines" is pitiful. However, as most people 
believe, without knowing why, just as Mr. Phillipps 
believed, I have to follow his lead, but before I get 
through I will substantiate my proposition. 

The name Shakespeare is quite another etymologi- 
cally and orthographically from Shagsper, or Shak- 
spere, or Shaksper, or Shaxpeyr, or Shackysper, or 
Shaxper. It is not in evidence that any author lived 
in tbe age of Elizabeth whose family and baptismal 
name was William Shakespeare, or Shake-speare. 
There is no such historical man — no individual known 
who bore that name — and the inference is fair that the 
name as printed upon certain poems and plays was a 
pseudonym, like that of "Mark Twain" or of "George 
Bliot". Many conjectures have been ventured as to 
the real author, but there have never been proofs, and 
the right, even now, in 1900, remains an open ques- 
tion. Nevertheless, without proof, the authorship has 
been attributed to a player, later a manager in and 
a proprietor of a I^ondon theater, one William Shak- 
sper, and books innumerable have been written on 
the cool assumption that he was the man. Now the 
exposure of his claim is the object of this writing. 



PART I. 



SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE FAMILY OF WILLIAM SHAKSPER. 

The family of the player were known to their neigh- 
bors as Shaksper; that is, the first syllable had the 
sound of back, the second of per, e short, making 
Shaksper. As no one of them in all their generations ^ 
preceding the pla5^er had known how to write, there is 
no evidence from themselves as to the spelling or pro- 
nunciation of the name. It was written by other 
persons, however, in a variety of forms, but almost 
always expresses the sound Shak-sper. R, G. White 
has given thirty of these forms, and other authors 
have collected nearly as many more. 

In the records of the town council of Stratford, and 
of the Court of Records, the name is written many 
times. We know this because Halliwell-Phillipps has 
printed every mention of John Shaksper which has been 
found. In his pages are to be seen Shaksper, Shakys- 
-per, Shaxper, Shaxpur, Shaxysper, Shexper, Shakis- 
per, Shakspeyr, Shakgspeyr, Shacksper, Shaxpere, 
Shakspere, Shaksbere, Shakspear, Mr. PhilHpps gives 
many fac-similes of the name John Shaksper as writ- 
ten. Also of Mary Shaksper, John's wife, and one of 

(7) 



8 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPKARB. 

his uncle, Hary Shaksper. I find the name in these 

fac-similes thirty-eight times. We have Shakpeyr or 

Shakkspeyr fifteen times. Cut i shows this style of 

signature: 

1. 

Nineteen are Shaksper, Shakysper, some as shown 
in Cut 2 (the last letter read r by Phillipps): 

2. 

4^^yyw i^f^Jf (^^ 

Others end in the ordinary modern r, as in Cut 3: 




A variation of the r in 3 is shown in Cut 4, page 
232. Phillipps reads the name Shakyspere, but it is 
nothing otherwise than Shakysper: 



THK FAMII^Y of WILI.IAM SHAKSPKR. 9 

Others have the terminal r in the German form, as 
seen in Cut 5, taken from H.-P., 11, 236: 

5. 

Phillipps reads this letter as r, but the same letter 
written by a rapid or an inexpert penman, so as to 
open and become like a w, as in Cut 6 (11, 239), he 
reads re: 

6. 




There are a few signatures where the r (like that in 
Cut 3) and e, each distinct, are undoubtedly blended 
into one character, but in nearly all cases the final 
letter is merely an expanded r. If the scrivener de- 
sired to make re, with a German r, he wrote it as in 
Cut 7 (H.-P., II, 13), each letter distinct: 

7. 

Another fine example of this distinct r and e is seen 
in H.-P., II, 90. Wherever there is the slightest 
flourish at the extremity of the r (as, for example. 
Cut 4), Phillipps reads the letter as re, for it would 



lO SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKESPKARB. 

be painful if the name of the ' ' bard of our admira- 
tion ' ' could not be made to end with the two magical 
letters. But a German r, when made separately, nat- 
urally carries a flourish at the extremity, as seen in 
Malone's figure of that letter accompanying his fac- 
simile of Shaksper's signature to the deed of 1612, 
and repeated herein. Chapter XV. Also as seen in 
Cut 8, an enlarged fac-simile of a script r from Wood- 
berry's ' ' Method of Learning the German Lan- 
guage:" 

8. 

It is plain that the German r carries a flourish that 
has sometimes been taken for an e. 

The use of the German r, we are told, was com- 
mon among scriveners during the reigns of Elizabeth 
and James ; but that it was also used half a century 
later can be seen in the fac-simile of John Milton's 
contract with Samuel Symons for the sale of the 
manuscript of Paradise Lost, given in Pickering's 
edition of Milton's Works, Vol. i. In this the Ger- 
man r repeatedly occurs in such words as " whereby", 
"whereof", and "were", followed by a distinct e of 
the same species as the one which precedes the r in 
these same words. Inasmuch as nearly, if not quite 
all, the mentions of John Shaksper's name occur in 
the records, and were therefore written by scriveners, 
the larger part of them undoubtedly ending in r, as 
seen in cuts 1-4, it is to be presumed that these 
sprawling characters spoken of were intended for r 
also. Fifteen of the fac- similes have the first syllable 



the; family of WIIvIvIAM shaksper. II 

of the surname Shax. It is evident that John was 
known among his neighbors as Shaxper or Shaksper, 
and nothing else. His son WilHam, therefore, began 
life as William Shaksper or Shaxper. 

R. G. White says : ' ' The name sometimes appears 
as Chaksper or Shaksper. It is possible that Shakes- 
peare is a corruption of some name of a more peaceful 
meaning, and therefore perhaps of humbler deriva- 
tion. ' ' Dr. Morgan says : ' ' The name is supposed to 
have been simply Jacques Pierre (John Peter). This 
Shak is the present mispronunciation of Jacques 
prevalent in Warwickshire. ' ' * 

Phillipps, II, 59, prints a letter from Abraham 
Sturley, of Stratford, to Richard Quiney, a towns- 
man, living in lyondon, 4th November, 1598, asking 
his aid in getting some money ' ' through our countri- 
man Mr. Wm. Shak." Shak is not Shake, and the 
mention shows what the pronunciation of the first 
syllable of the player's name was. This sort of ab- 
breviation of a surname is not uncommon in our 



* "In all the forms (of the Shaksper name) tabulated by Wise, 
the one printed on the title pages of the plays and poems 
"Shakespeare", does not appear. It is unique. So far as we 
know, no person in Stratford, or in any other part of the king- 
dom, previous to the publication of the Venus and Adonis, 
wrote it in that way. Iviteiature had an absolute monopoly 
of it." Reed, 13. " In Grecian mythology, Pallas Athene was the 
goddess of wisdom, philosophy, poetry and the fine arts. Her 
original name was simply Pallas, a word derived from pellein, 
signif jdng to brandish or shake. She was generally represented 
with a spear. Athens, the home of the drama, was under the 
protection of this Spear-shaker. In our age such a signature 
would be understood at once as a pseudonym." Id. 14. 



12 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPKARK. 

country among English emigrants. In a mining 
village which I lived in, Billy Clatworthy went by the 
name of Billy Clat ; Mrs. Cadwallader, Mrs. Cad ; 
and Mrs. Shepherd, Mrs. Shep. So, to a Stratford 
man, William Shaksper was Wm. Shak. 

William Shaksper was the son of John Shaksper, 
who in his younger daj^s had been a tenant of Robert 
Arden, farmer. After Arden's death, John married 
Mary, his daughter, and at an uncertain date removed 
to Stratford-on-Avon, where he practiced the trade of 
a butcher. H.-P. tells us, I, 35, that " for some years 
subsequently to this period (his removal) John Shak- 
sper was a humble tradesman, holding no conspicuous 
position in the town". Aubrey says that John was a 
butcher, and that young William, as he had been told 
by some of the neighbors, "exercised his father's 
trade". 

Phillipps, I, 178, says that "both families" — the 
Shakspers and the Ardens — ^were really descended 
from obscure English country yeomen ; and on page 
55, "that nearly every one of the boys connections was 
a farmer". Again, on page 38, that "both parents 
were absolutely illiterate". As it was then, so it had 
ever been, always peasants or obscure country yeomen. 
"For years the European world grew upon a single 
type, in which the forms of the fathers' thought were 
the forms of the sons, and the last descendant was 
occupied in treading into paths the foot-prints of his 
distant ancestors." Froude, Hist. Eng., I, i. 

Dr. Johnson asserts that ' ' in the time of Shakes- 
peare, the lower classes were but just emerging from 
barbarity". 



Th:^ pamiIvY op wiIvIvIAm shakspeJr. 13 

" The inventory of Robert Arden's (father to Mary) 
goods (H.-P. says he was a farmer and nothing more), 
which was taken shortly after his death, in 1556, 
enables us to realize the kind of life that was followed 
by the poet's mother during her girlhood. In the 
total absence of books or means of intellectual educa- 
tion, her requirements must have been restricted to an 
experimental knowledge of matters connected with the 
farm. 

' ' There can be no doubt that the maiden ^pent most 
of her time in the homeliest of rustic employments; 
and it is not impossible . . . she occasionally as- 
sisted in the more robust occupations of the 
field. . . . Existence was passed in her father's 
house in some respects, we should say, rather after 
the manner of pigs than of human beings. . . . 
There were no table knives, no forks, no crockery. 
The food was manipulated on flat pieces of stout wood. 
The means of ablution were lamentably defective ; 
what were called towels were merely for wiping the 
hands after a meal, and there was not a single wash 
basin in the establishment. As for the inmates and 
other laborers, it was very seldom indeed, if ever, that 
the3^ either washed their hands or combed their hair. ' ' 
H.-P., 28. 

It is necessary to call attention to these particulars 
that the early familiarity of William Shaksper with 
the ways and manners of gentlewomen, not to speak 
of ladies, countesses, duchesses, princesses and queens, 
may be estimated. His wife was just such another 
rustic as his mother, yet a writer in the Atlantic 
Monthly, for December, 1897, suggests that the wife 



14 SHAKSPSR NOT SHAKKSPBJARB). 

"served as raw material to be worked up into Imo- 
genes and Rosalinds — enchanting creatures" ! 

A great deal of labor has been expended in an effort 
to make the Ardens to have been of gentle birth, but so 
high an authority as Dowden is compelled to say: 
"That these Ardens wxre connected with an ancient 
family of gentle folk of that name has been asserted, 
and may be true, but the statement cannot be proved", 

"Stratford then contained about 1800 inhabitants, 
who dwelt chiefly in thatched cottages, which 
straggled over the ground, etc. The streets were 
foul with offal, mud, muck heaps and reeking stable 
refuse, the accumulation of which the town ordinances 
and the infliction of which fines could not prevent, 
even before the doors of the better sort of people." 
R. G. White, 21. Cottages of that day in Stratford 
consisted of mud walls and a thatched roof. See H.- 
P., 205. 

"At this period, and for many generations after- 
wards, the sanitary condition of the thoroughfares of 
Stratford-on-Avon was simply terrible Streamlets of 
a water power sufficient for the operation of corn mills 
meandered through the town. , . . Here and 
there small middens were ever in the course of accu- 
mulation, the receptacles of offal and every species of 
nastiness. A regulation for the removal of these col- 
lections to certain specified localities interspersed 
through the borough, and known as common dung- 
hills, appears to have been the extent of the interfer- 
ence that the authorities ventured or cared to exercise 
in such matters. Sometimes when the nuisance was 
thought to be sufficiently flagrant, they made a raid 



THS FAMIIvY OP WII.I.IAM SHAKSPEJR. 1 5 

on those inhabitants who had suffered their refuse to 
accumulate largely in the highways. On one of these 
occasions, in April, 1552, John Shaksper was amerced 
in the sum of twelve pence for having amassed what was 
no doubt a conspicuous sterquinariuni before his house 
in Henley street; and under these unsavory cir- 
cumstances does the history of the poet's father com- 
mence in the records of England". H.-P., I, 24. 
Garrick described Stratford-on-Avon a hundred years 
later (1769), as "the most dirty, unseemly, ill-paved, 
wretched-looking town in all Britain. ' ' 



1 6 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKE;SPB;ARE;. 



CHAPTER II. 

AS TO THE HOUSE IN WHICH JOHN SHAKSPER 
IvIVED. 

I quote White's "England Without and Within," 
p. 526: "Of all that I saw connected with his (William 
Shaksper) memory, his house was the most disappoint- 
ing; and more, it was sad, depressing. The house 
had recently been 'restored,' and so destroyed. Its 
outside has an air of newness that is positively of- 
fensive. All expression of rural antiquity has been 
scraped and painted, and roofed, and clap-boarded out 
of it. 

"Within, however, not much of this smoothing has 
been done. My heart sank within me as I looked 
around upon the rude, mean dwelling-place of him 
who had filled the world with the splendor of his im- 
aginings. It is called a house, and any building in- 
tended for a dwelling-place is a house; but the interior 
of this one is hardly that of a rustic cottage; it is 
almost that of a hovel, poverty-stricken, squalid, ken- 
nel-like. A house so cheerless and comfortless I had 
not seen in rural England. The poorest, meanest 
farm-house that I had ever entered in New England or 
on lyong Island was a more cheerful habitation. And 
amid these sordid surroundings William Shakespeare 
grew to manhood. . . . Then for the first time I 
knew and felt from how low a condition of life Shake- 
peare had arisen. For his family were not reduced to 



HOUSK IN WHICH JOHN SHAKSPEJR WVKD. 1 7 

this; they had risen to it. This was John Shaksper's 
home in the days of his brief prosperity. . . . 
The upper part of the house, to which you climb by a 
little rude stairway that is hardly good enough for a 
decent stable, has been turned into a museum of 
doubtful relics and gimcracks, and is made as unlike 
as possible what it must have been when Shakespeare 
lived there. There is very little of this museum that 
is worth attention, but there is one object of some in- 
terest. It is a letter written to Wm. Shackspere by 
Richard Quiney, of Stratford, asking for a loan of 
money. This scrap of paper has the distinction of 
being the only existing thing, except his will, that we 
know must have been in Shakespeare's hands, for as 
to the Florio Montaigne, others whose" judgment on 
such a point is worth mine ten times over, think, as I 
do, that it is a forgery." 

Further: ' 'To Anne Hathaway' s cottage at Shottery 
I went, taking the path through the fields which 
Shakespeare took too often for his happiness. There 
is little to be said about this house, which is merely a 
thatched cottage of the same grade as the house in 
Henley street — in its original condition a picturesque 
object in a landscape, but the lowliest sort of human 
habitation. I sat upon the settle by the great fire- 
place, where the wonderful boy of eighteen was en- 
snared by the woman of twenty-six. I could not help 
but think of the toil, the wretchedness, the perplexity, 
and the shame that were born to him beneath that 
roof. . . . Thus ended my visit to Stratford-on- 
Avon, where I advise no one to go who would preserve 
any elevated idea connected with Shakespeare's per- 



1 8 SHASKPER NOT SHAKESPEJARE;. 

sonality. ... It was with a sense of mingled 
gloom and wrong of rightful expectation that I turned 
my back upon Stratford-on- Avon. ' ' 

[Mrs. Dall assures her readers that Halliwell-Phil- 
lipps ' 'is the highest authority in all that concerns the 
life of William Shakespeare", meaning William Shak- 
sper, of Stratford. Mr. Phillipps tells us that John 
Shaksper and Mary, his wife, "were really descended 
from obscure yeomen", and that "both were absolutely 
illiterate." Further, that John began life in Stratford 
"as an humble tradesman", either a butcher or a wool 
dealer, or both. Yet Mrs. Dall can say: "As to his 
(William Shaksper' s) social station, it was that to 
which New England is indebted for her best citizens — 
for the Winthrops, the Peabodys, the Rogerses, and 
Lawrences and the Appletons" — which certainly is 
mighty hard on the Winthrops, etc. Undoubtedly 
some of the men and women who emigrated to New 
England after 1620 were of the station to which John 
Shaksper belonged, absolutel}^ illiterate, obscure yeo- 
men, or humble tradesmen, but it was a far cry from 
them to the Winthrops and Appletons. One set was 
at the bottom, the mud sills, the other was the top of 
the structure. Dr. lyconard Bacon says: "The princi- 
pal planters of Massachusetts were English country 
gentlemen of no inconsiderable fortune, of enlarged 
understanding improved by liberal education' ' . 

Dr. Byington also adds his testimony: "The Puri- 
tans who came to Massachusetts Bay were, for the 
most part, in comfortable circumstances at home, with 
good education and with good social connections in 



HOUSi; IN WHICH JOHN SHAKSPER IvIVED. 1 9 

Kngland; and an unusual proportion of them were 
graduates from English Universities." 

Mrs. Dall heads her list of authorities for the life of 
William Shaksper with Charles Knight's "Life of 
Shakespeare", — a work of imagination strictly, built 
up to suit the man who, he thinks, wrote the Shakes- 
peare plays, but without one historical fact to sup- 
port it.] 



20 SHAKSPEJR NOT shak:^sp:^ars;. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE SCHOOIv ADVANTAGES OF THE BOY WILLIAM. 

"It must have been about this period, 1568, that 
Shakespeare (Shaksper) entered into the mysteries of 
the horn-book and the A, B, C. Although both his 
parents were absolutely illiterate, they had the sagacity 
to appreciate the importance of an education for their 
son, and the poet, somehow or other, was taught to 
read and write, the necessary preliminaries to admis- 
sion into the Free Schools. There were few persons in 
Stratford capable of initiating him even into these pre- 
paratory accomplishments'", etc. H.-P., I, 38. As a 
matter of fact, there is.no proof whatever that William 
ever went to any sort of school, or ever learned to 
read; and as to his illiterate parents having the sagacity 
to appreciate the importance of his learning, the prob- 
ability is that as became such illiterate people, they 
cared nothing about it. The Shakspers had got on 
very well so far without that accomplishment. ' 'Al- 
though there is no certain information on the sub- 
ject, it may perhaps be assumed that at this time 
boys usually entered the free schools at the age of 
seven. ... If so, unless its system of instruc- 
tion differed essentially from that pursued in other 
establishments of a similar character, his earliest 
knowledge of Latin was derived from two well-known 
books of the time, the 'Accidence', and the 'Senten- 
tiae Pueriles'. The best authorities unite in telling us 



SCHOOI, ADVAN'TAGEiS O^ THE^ BOY WIlvWAM. 21 

that the poet" (z. <?., player Shaksper) "imbibed a 
certain amount of Latin at school, but that his ac- 
quaintance with that language was, throughout his 
life, of a very limited character. It is not probable 
that scholastic learning was ever congenial to his 
tastes, and it should be recollected that books in most 
parts of the country were then of very rare occur- 
rence, lyily's Grammar and a few classical works, 
chained to the desks of the free schools, were prob- 
ably the only volumes of the kind to be found at 
Stratford-on-Avon. Exclusive of Bibles, Church 
Services, Psalters and education manuals, there were 
certainly not more than two or three dozen books, if 
so many, in the whole town. The copy of the black- 
letter English Histor}^, so often depicted as well 
thumbed by Shakespeare in his father's parlor, never 
existed out of the imagination." H.-P., I, 53. 
This disposes of Charles Knight's figment: "In the 
humble home of Shakespeare's boyhood, there was in 
all probability to be found a thick, squat, folio volume, 
then some thirty years printed, in which might be 
read, 'What misery, what murder! and what execrable 
plagues this famous region hath suffered by the divi- 
sion and dissensions of the renowned houses of I^an- 
caster and York'. This book was Hall's Chronicle." 

R. G. White says of that school and of boy Shaksper: 
"He could have learned I^atin, and some Greek; some 
English, too, but not much, for English was held in 
scorn by the scholars of those days, and long after". 
Dr. Morgan says: "Children in those days were put at 
their kic, hcec, hoc, at an age when we send them to the 



22 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPEIAR:^. 

kindergarten. But no master ever dreamed of drilling 
them in their own vernacular. ' ' 

' 'A maximum of caning and a minimum of parrot- 
work in desultory Latin paradigms, which, whether 
wrong or right, were of no consequence whatever 
to anybody, was the village idea of a boy's edu- 
cation in England for long centuries, easily inclusive 
of the years within which William Shakspeare lived 
and died. The greatest scholars of those centuries 
either educated themselves, or by learned parents were 
guided to the sources of human intelligence and ex- 
perience. At any rate, they drew nothing out of the 
country grammar schools. ' ' * 

That William Shaksper attended the free school at 
Stratford, or any other school, is a conjecture on the 
part of his biographers. The common people of En- 
gland at that period, and all through the reign of 
Elizabeth, were illiterate, "gross and dark", in the 
words of Dr. Johnson. In his preface to Shake- 
speare, 1765, Dr. Johnson asserts that in the time of 
Shakespeare, "to be able to read and write, outside 
of professed scholars, or men and women of high rank, 
was an accomplishment still valued for its rarity." 
What writing was necessary for such people, letters. 



* ' ' The annual charge on the town of Stratford for support of 
its grammar schools was, in 1568, ^20.13; ^20 of which was for 
the salary of the master and his assistants. The pay of the su- 
perintendent was eight pence or at the rate of one-sixth of a 
penny a week. These figures seem to suggest that the grammar 
school could not have been on the extensive scale which is predi- 
cated for it on the intellectual output of one of its pupils." 
Morgan, A Study, etc.. 4th Ed., p. 440. 



SCHOOI. ADVANTAGES OF THE BOY W1I.LIAM. 23 

accounts or other, was done by a professional class, 
the scriveners. Mr. Phillipps, I, 33, tells us that "in 
March, 1565, John Shaksper, with the assistance of 
his former colleague in the same office, made up the 
accounts of the Chamberlains of the borough for the 
year. Neither of these worthies could even write 
their own names; but nearly all tradesmen reckoned 
with counters, the results on important occasions being 
entered by professional scriveners." Of nineteen al- 
dermen and burgesses of Stratford-on-Avon, only six 
could write their names. (See fac-simile in H.-P., I, 
40.) 

lyce asserts, 5, that "when attesting documents he 
(John Shaksper) occasionally made his mark, but there 
is evidence in the Stratford archives that he could write 
with facility." 

Mr. Lee must claim for John the various copies of 
his name contained in H.-P., and of which I have be- 
fore given several examples. If so, John had as won- 
derful a handwriting as his son William, whose name 
is never written twice in the same style. A man who 
can write does not use a mark in place of his name in 
attesting documents, or at all. 

Halli well- Phillipps personally investigated all the 
accessible records of Stratford for the period of John 
Shaksper' s residence in that town, and in his volumes 
has given fac-similes of every mention of John's 
name, often with a good deal of the context. He de- 
clares positively that John could not write, and that 
he made his signature with a mark.* Unless Mr. I^ee 

* ' ' There is no reasonable pretense for assuming that, in the 
time of John Shakespeare, whatever may have been the case at 



24 SHAKSPSR NOT SHAKBSPB)ARE. 

produces satisfactory evidence to the contrary — some- 
thing more than his own mere dictum — John must be 
held to have been an iUiterate. 

In 1894, Dr. Rolfe ran a series of four papers through 
the pages of the "Youth's Companion", for the in- 
struction of American young people, entitled ' ' Shake- 
speare, the Boy' ' , handsomely illustrated. Of course, 
as no particulars whatever have come down to this age 
respecting the boy William Shaksper, except the date 
of his baptism, in the Stratford church register, every 
word of Dr. Rolfe' s account is spun from his own im- 
agination, and it consists of what Mr. Fleay calls 
' ' fanciful might-have-beens' ' . 

No. I sets off with a cut of a finely dressed boy of 
eight or nine years, hands in jacket pocket, chin in air, 
apparently posing as one absorbed in contemplation of 
nature. The adjacent text describes at some length 
the beautiful scenery of Warwickshire. Dr. Rolfe 
thinks the boy's delight in out-door life (because the 
plays show that the author of them delighted in that) , 
' ' may have been intensified by the experience of the 
house in Henley street, with the reeking pile of filth 
at the front door' ' — the sterquinarium we have before 
heard of. ' ' His poetry is everywhere full of beauty 
and fragrance of the flowers that bloom in and about 

earlier periods, it was the practice for marks to be used by those 
who were capable of signing their names. No instance of the 
kind has ever been discovered among the numerous records of 
his era that are preserved at Stratford-on-Avon, while even a 
few rare examples in other districts, if such are to be found, 
would be insufficient to countenance a theory that he was able 
•to write. All the known instances point in the opposite direc- 
tion." H-P. II, 369. 



SCHOOI. ADVAN'l'AG:eS OI^ tHE) BOY WILWAM. 25 

Stratford; and the wonderful accuracy of his allusions 
to them . . . shows how thoroughly at home he 
was with them, how intensely he loved and studied 
them. ' ' I notice in passing that the worshipers of the 
Stratford man find it convenient to overlook the fact 
that the flowers which ' ' bloom in and around Strat- 
ford' ' bloom as well in all the shires of Southern Eng- 
land, "These facts do not prove that he (Shaksper) 
was ever a botanist or a gardener. Neither are his 
numerous allusions to wild flowers and plants, not one 
of which appears to be peculiar to Warwickshire, evi- 
dences". H.-P., I, 136. 

No. 2 describes a grammar school of that day — any 
one — and gives cuts of the ancient school room of 
Stratford, and a horn-book. Dr. Rolfe thinks this 
boy went to school when he was seven years old and 
left at thirteen, but it is all conjecture, as I have 
already said. "How William liked going to school 
we do not know, but if we are to judge from his refer- 
ences to school boys and school masters, he had little 
taste for it. As Jonson says, Shakespeare had little 
Latin and less Greek". (This little Latin does not 
apply very well to the boy who came in manhood to 
be the author of the Shakespeare plays, for he was a 
profound Latin scholar, as the plays themselves bear 
witness, but it will do as applied to the boy Shaksper. ) 

Nos. 3 and 4 describe the life of a well brought up 
boy, son of a nobleman or gentleman, and the games 
and pastimes of boys in general; and a cut is given of 
an ideal Henley street, swept and garnished, with half 
a dozen nicely dressed boys at play, in spruce jackets 
and turned down linen collars, their faces washed and 



26 SHAKSPE^R NO'f SHAKB;SP:eAR:^. 

noses clean. Needless to say, boy William Shaksper 
could not have appeared in that garb, any more than 
filthy Henley street could have shone with cleanliness. 
The real boys in 1574, one and all, must have been 
gutter-snipes, in smock frocks and fustian breeches. 
I present a cut of the Stratford boy of that age, very 
likely William Shaksper himself. What makes me 
think it is the real William is that he seems to be an- 
ticipating his career as a jig dancer, under the instruc- 
tion of Kempe, to be hereafter spoken of. He does 
not look as if he would develop into "the bard of our 
admiration." 




In 1896, Dr. Rolfe published a volume of upwards 
of 200 pages, with the same title, ' ' Shakespeare the 



SCHOOIv ADVANTAGES OP THK BOY WILI.IAM. 27 

Boy", made up from the Youth's Companion papers, 
extended and padded immensely. On the cover 
and also within are the bogus arms of John Shake- 
speare, which were applied for by player William on 
two several occasions, under cover of his father' s name, 
with a vast deal of lying, but which were never granted 




to either John Shaksper or William. The meaning of 
these (bogus) arms of the father on and in this book, 
is to make it evident that the boy William came of a 
race of gentlemen, and was brought up as the son of a 



28 SHAKSPi^R NOT SHAKiBSPBARE;. , 

gentleman. The frontispiece represents a beautiful 
boy of eight or nine years, with a face that never could 
have grown into the vacuous one of the Droeshout por- 
trait, the only authentic likeness of William Shaksper, 
and dressed like a young nobleman. I copy this re- 
markable picture, w^hich apparently has been composed 
from the likenesses of John Milton * and Philip Sydney. 
(See cut, preceding page. ) 

Dress in the sixteenth century, and the centuries 
before that, "was the symbol of rank"; and for the 
son of a "humble tradesman" to be decked in the style 
of Rolfe's boy was impossible, and no one knows this 
better than the learned Doctor himself. 

In another picture this young person is portrayed as 
standing by the Avon, fishing-pole in hand, not as a 
Stratford fishing boy, breeches soiled and mouth full 
of worms, but like a gentleman, in full dress, even to 
trunk hose — ^in fact a i2mo edition of the great Earl 
of Leicester. 

The text is as misleading as the plates. To quote 
the fancies of Charles Knight's "mischievously fertile 
imagination", borrowing one of Mr. Fleay's phrases 
again, as fact, when Dr. Rolfe knows, none better, 
that there is not a particle of fact in them, any more 
than in the fancies of Sinbad the Sailor, how shall it 
be characterized? Hear him: " 'He had', says this 
genial biographer, 'a copy well-thumbed from his 
first reading days of The Palace of Pleasure, by 
William Paynter. In this work was set forth 'the 

*"Wiien a boy, Milton was remarkable for beauty, "delicate 
complexion, clear blue eyes, and light-brown bair flowing down 
his shoulders. ' ' That is the little man Rolfe has captured. 



SCHOOI, ADVANTAGKS OF THJ^ BOY WIIvLIAM. 29 

great valiance of noble gentlemen', etc. 'Pleasant 
little apothegms and short fables were there in the 
book which the brothers and sisters of William Shake- 
spear (Shaksper) had heard him tell with marvelous 
spirit. There was another collection too, which that 
youth had diligently read — the Gesta Romanorum, 
old legends," etc., etc. But beyond these our 
Mammilius had many a tale of spirits and gob- 
lins, etc. But the youth had met with the his- 
tory of the murder of Duncan, the King of Scot- 
land, in a chronicle older than Holinshed,' " etc., ad 
nauseam. All this in the face of the declarations of 
Halliwell-Phillipps, whom Dr. Rolfe, p. 217, speaks of 
as one of the most careful and conservative critics, and 
who is styled by nearly all of the modern commenta- 
tors or biographers, the one great authority for the 
facts of William Shaksper' s life. Wherein do such 
misrepresentations of the facts of William Shaksper' s 
boyhood differ from the Ireland forgeries, and the 
Collier frauds! 

John Shaksper, "after his marriage, speculated in 
wool, and dealt in corn and other articles." H.-P. I, 
30. Notwithstanding his inability to read and write, 
he had more or less capacity for business, which, as 
we shall see, his son William inherited, manifesting it 
in a greatly increased degree. John ' 'was expert at 
reckoning with counters", Mr. Phillipps says, I, 33, 
and was able to ' 'make up the accounts of the Chamber- 
lains of the borough' ' . He came in time to fill everj^ 
ofl&ce in his town from ale-taster and constable, to 
chamberlain, alderman and bailiff, the last highest of 
all, with limited magisterial powers. In a village of 



30 SHAKSPEJR NOT SHAKEJSPSARS. 

poor cottagers, all alike illiterate, he doubtless sur- 
passed his neighbors in business faculty. Among the 
blind the one-eyed man is king. At any rate he 
showed a willingness to serve the public; but he some- 
how so managed his private affairs, that he soon ran 
through what little property himself and his wife had. 
He seems also to have been a man fond of litigation, 
another trait his son William inherited. But John 
had his pain from this source as well as his pleasure. 
" His name is very often on the court records, gaining 
and losing suits". H.-P., H, 217, et seq. This was 
as early as 1558. But on June 19, 1576, the return 
made to a suit to distrain goods on his land was that 
he had nothing that could be distrained. On March 
29, 1577, he produced a writ of habeas corpus in the 
Stratford court of record, which showed that he had 
been in custody or prison, probably for debt." Furni- 
vall, preface to the lycopold Shakespeare. In 1592, 
he was one of nine persons ' 'who came not to church 
for fear of prison for debt." H.-P,, II, 146. 

At the time of the habeas corpus matter, the boy 
William was thirteen years old. H.-P., 5, says: "In 
all probability, he (John) removed the future drama- 
tist from school when the latter was about thirteen' ' ; 
and on p. 56, we are told that, "the defective classical 
education of the poet" (z. e. of player Shaksper) , "was 
really owing to his being removed from school before 
the usual age, his father requiring his assistance in one 
of the branches of the Henley street business." — 
Id, 32. 

At Stratford-on-Avon, the guide shows to the ad- 
miring stranger the very desk at which boy William 



SCHOOIv ADVANTAGEJS OF THE) BOY WII.I.IAM. 3 1 

Studied. I read in a recent paper: "Of the few 
genuine relics of Sliakspere preserved in his native 
town, the most interesting are his signet ring and the 
desk at which he sat in the grammar school. . . ." 
Per contra, Dr. Rolfe, in the Youth's Companion 
papers before quoted, on describing the school-room, 
says: "A desk, said with no authority whatever, to 
have been used by Shakspere, is preserved in the 
Henley street house." 

William Winter, "Shakespeare's England," ed. 
1896, p. 137, says of this ring: "Here likewise is 
shown a gold seal ring found many years ago in a 
field near Stratford Church, on which delicately en- 
graved appear the letters W. S. It may have belonged 
to Shakespeare. The conjecture is that it did."* 

The question is pertinent, who had that ring made 
and threw it into the field ? There are so many for- 
geries in the cause of William Shaksper, that authen- 
tication is called for, as well in the case of rings as of 
portraits, signatures, letters, etc. The rule is never 
to trust an unauthenticated assertion concerning Wil- 
liam Shaksper made by one of his devotees. 

Whatever the boy may have learned at school, if he 
really went to school, he did not learn to write his own 
name, as I shall hereinafter show (Chap. XVI). 
That William Shaksper, player, manager, proprietor 
of a theater, and active business man, could at any 

* Gerald Massey, The Secret Drama of the Shakespeare 
Sonnets, 1888, p. 86, has no doubt as to this ring. "It is a 
fact still more interesting that the seal-ring of Shakespeare, now 
preserved at Stratford, the seal he used to seal his letters with, 
ehows the true lover's knot entwining about his initials, W. S," 



3? • SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. 

time in his life use a pen at all, is more than doubtful. 
Whatever writing was necessary must have been done 
for him bj- other hands. That need not be surprising. 
Writing as we have seen was at that period a rare ac- 
complishment, one rarely found among the class to 
which William Shaksper belonged. John Shaksper 
was innocent of the art, and yet he filled successively 
all the ofl&ces of the town of Stratford, made up the 
town accounts, and performed the duties of a magis- 
trate. His writing was done by him by official clerks — 
scriveners. 



the; youth of wii,l,iam shakspkr. 33 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE YOUTH OF WII.I.IAM SHAKSPER. 

"All that can be prudently said is that the inclina-. 
tion of the testimonies leans toward the belief that John 
Shakspere eventually apprenticed his eldest son to a 
butcher." H.-P., I, 57. The Stratford tradition, 
first mentioned by Aubrey (about 1680), was, that 
"William's father was a Butcher, and I have been told 
heretofore by some of the neighbors, that when he was 
a boy he exercised his father's Trade, but when he 
kill'd a Calfe he would do it in a high style, and make 
a Speech. There was at that time another Butcher's 
son in this towne that was held not at all inferior to 
him for a natural witt, his acquaintance and coetanean, 
but dyed young". Ingleby, 383. On this and the 
rest of Aubrey's account (relating to a later period), 
H.-P. says, preface: "Very meagre, indeed, are the 
fragments of information to be safely collected from 
Aubrey, but every word in the next traditional narra- 
tive is to be received with respect as a faithful record 
of the local belief. That account is preserved in min- 
utes respecting Shakespeare (Shaksper) which were 
compiled by a traveler who paid a visit to the Church 
of Stratford-on-Avon in the year 1693. His inform- 
ant was one William Castle, then the parish clerk and 
sexton, a person who could have had no motive for 
deception in such matters". The account spoken of 
is found in a letter from the Rev. Mr. Dowdall to 



34 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKESPEARB. 

Edw. Southwell, and the original was in Halliwell- 
Phillipps' possession. It is dated April lo, 1693, and 
runs as follows ( Ingleby ,417): " The first remarkable 
place in this County that I visited was Stratford super 
Avon, where I saw the effigies of our English trage- 
dian, Mr. Shakespeare. . . . The clerk that showed 
me this church is above 80 years old; he says that this 
Shakespear was formerly in this town bound appren- 
tice to a butcher, but that he ran from his master to 
London, and was there received into the playhouse as 
a servitour, and by this means had an opportunity to 
be what he afterwards proved. He was the best of 
his family," etc. 

Phillipps says (I, 53): "The tradition reported by 
the parish clerk in 1693 is the only known evidence of 
Shakespeare's having been an apprentice, but his as- 
sertion that the poet commenced his practical life as a 
butcher is supported by the earlier testimony of 
Aubrey". This clerk, above 80 years old in 1693, 
was a child when "William Shaksper died, 161 6; and, 
living in the parish, of course he had known hundreds 
of men and women who were personally acquainted 
with the player, boy and man. The phenomenal 
Shaksper, who ran away in poverty, and who returned 
to Stratford the richest man of the town, would be the 
subject of wonder and gossip in Stratford, not only so 
long as he lived, but so long as any one lived there 
who had known him, or so long as any of his de- 
scendants lived there. The clerk's testimony, there- 
fore, is of the utmost importance, and exceeds in value- 
that of any other individual of whom the books speak 
in connection with the history of young William 



the; you'Th op wii.i.iam shaksper. 35 

Sliaksper. He is an unimpeachable witness; his in- 
telligence and respectability are vouched for by his 
ofl&cial position. 

Mr. Dowdall does not speak of Mr. Shakspere, the 
author of certain famous poems and plays, but the 
"tragedian" — the player — and plainly the clerk knew 
Shaksper simply as a player and rich man. 

There is no getting rid of the butcher business, 
though it is very distasteful to the Shaksperians. 
Betterton, in the middle of the seventeenth century 
(who posed as a natural son of player Shaksper, with- 
out the least authority, the commentators agree), gave 
out that the boy Shaksper was brought up in the wool 
business, a thing he personally knew nothing about. 
But the testimony of the parish clerk, taken together 
with that of Aubrey, settles the matter. Boy Shak- 
sper was brought up as a butcher. 

' 'Although the information at present accessible does 
not enable us to determine the exact nature of Shakes- 
peare's (Shaksper's) occupations from his fourteenth 
year to his eighteenth, that is to say, from 1577 to 
1582, there can be no doubt that he was mercifully re- 
leased from what, to a spirit like his, must have been 
the deleterious monotony of a school education. 
Whether he passed those years as a butcher or a wool 
dealer does not greatly matter". H.-P., I, 58. And 
this author goes on to say that in either capacity he 
was acquiring a more perfect knowledge of the world 
and human nature than could have been derived from 
a study of the classics. According to the traditions, 
he sowed wild oats extensively in those years, and no 



36 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKESPEARE). 

doubt did reap some knowledge of the Stratford world 
and Stratford human nature. 

Mr. Phillipps proceeds (6i): "It was the usual 
custom at Stratford for apprentices to be bound either 
for seven or ten years, so that if Shakespeare (Shak- 
sper) were one of them, it is not likely that he was out 
of his articles at the time of his marriage, which took 
place in 1582. 

lyittle schooling, perhaps none; illiterate family, bo- 
vine neighbors; bookless town; the five best years of 
his life devoted to getting a knowledge of the world 
and of human nature as a butcher, — a more perfect 
knowledge, Phillipps thinks, than could have been de- 
rived from a study of the classics, — no wonder this 
youth speedily came to grief. 

His marriage took place 28th November, 1582, when 
he was 18 years old: married to Ann Whately, age 27. 
The day before, or on 27th November, in the Con- 
sistory Court, at "Worcester, in the Marriage Register, 
there is an entry in these terms: "1582, Nov. 27th, 
William Shaxper and Ann Whateley, of Temple 
Grafton; and on the 28th, a bond is given to the 
Bishop of Worcester to hold him harmless for licens- 
ing, etc. , the marriage of William Shagspere and Ann 
Hathaway." Donnelly, 829. Mr. Donnelly gives a 
plausible explanation of the mystery: "Ann had 
been married to one Whately, and when the bride her- 
self gave her name for the marriage license, 27th No- 
vember, she gave it correctly, and she was married by 
that name; but the next day, when her farmer friends 
were called upon to furnish the bond, they gave the 
lawyer who drew it the name by which, in the careless 



the; youth Olf WII.LIAM SHAKSPKR. 37 

fashion of such people, she was generally known". 
Their first child was born within six months after, and 
twin children were baptized 1585, 2d July. "Some 
biographers have taken the ground that the smart 
young woman of twenty-six entrapped the boy of 
eighteen into this match, . . . but I fancy that 
the boy himself would have disdained to urge any such 
excuse for his conduct. William Shaksper at eighteen 
was not the guileless and unsophisticated country 
youth that the theor}^ assumes; and I suspect that he 
was more to blame for the hurried match than was 
Ann Hathaway." Dr. W. J. Rolfe, Ladies' Home 
Journal, XII, No. 4, p. 2, 1895 (paper on Mrs. Shak- 
spere). The fact undoubtedly was that this lad "of 
spirit' ' , having, as Phillipps suggests, been engaged in 
acquiring a knowledge of the world and of human na- 
ture, when he should have been at his books, had 
developed into a Stratford Lothario,— a homespun Don 
Juan. 

"The general tradition among the rustics of the 
neighborhood was that the poet was wild in his 
younger days" . H.-P., I, 71. 

"Three or four years after his union with Ann 
Hathaway (Whately), he had, obseryes Rowe, by a 
misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen 
into ill company; and amongst them some that made 
a frequent practice of deer-stealing engaged him with 
them more than once in robbing a park that belonged to 
Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. For 
this he was prosecuted by this gentleman, etc. ; . . . 
it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree 
that he was obliged to leave his business and family 



38 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKESPSARi;. 

for some time, and shelter himself in I^ondon' ' . H. -P. , 
I, 67. In plain English, he deserted his wife and 
babies, and it was many a long year before he came 
back to them. 

"Another version of the narrative has been recorded 
by Archdeacon Davies, who was the vicar of Sapperton, 
in the neighboring county of Gloucester, and who 
died there in the year 1708' ' — or ninety- two years after 
the death of the player. "According to this author- 
ity, the future great dramatist was 'much given to all 
unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly 
from Sir William Lucy, who had him oft whipped, and 
sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his 
native country to his great advancement' .... It 
is evident therefore from the independent testimonies 
of Rowe and Davies that the deer-stealing history 
was accepted in the poet's native town, and in the 
neighborhood during the latter part of the seventeenth 
century. That it has a solid basis of fact cannot admit 
of a reasonable doubt. , . . The impressive story 
of the penniless fugitive who afterwards became a 
leading inhabitant of Stratford, and the owner of New 
Place, was one likely to be handed down with passable 
fidelity to the grandchildren of his contemporaries' ' . 
H.-P. I, 69. 

"That he was also nearly, if not quite moneyless, is 
to be inferred from tradition, the latter supported by 
the ascertained facts of the adverse circumstances of 
his father at the time rendering it impossible for him 
to have received effectual assistance from his parents; 
nor is there any reason for believing that he was likely 



^thb; youth of wiIvWAm shaksper. 39 

to have obtained substantial aid from the relatives of 
his wife". Id. I, 79. 

"His father was bankrupt; his own family rapidly 
increasing; his home was dirty, bookless and miser- 
able; his companions degraded; his pursuits low; he 
had been whipped and imprisoned, and he fled penni- 
less to the great city." Donnelly, 40. 

A bright young fellow, of scanty education and in- 
different morals. He has seen all he cares to of pov- 
erty and its attendant miseries, and if he can find any- 
thing to turn his hand to, he will strive for money. 
That is the goal he has set his heart on, and it will be 
found he reaches it — money, heaps of it. 

"It was natural that the poet (Shaksper), having 
not only himself bitterly felt the want of resources not 
so many years previously, but seen so much incon- 
venience arising from a similar deficiency in his fa- 
ther's household, should now be determined to avoid 
the chance of a recurrence of the infliction." H.-P. 
I, 163. 

Wendell says, 423: "The son of a ruined country 
tradesman, and saddled with a wife and three children, 
his business at twenty-three was to conduct his life 
so that he might end it, not as a laborer, but as a gen- 
tleman. After five and twenty years of steady work, 
this end had been accomplished." Accomplished, as 
to the money getting, but as to the "gentleman", 
that is another matter. 



40 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPKARE). 

CHAPTER V. 

WHITHER? 

In view of the history of the boy and young man 
to his twenty-second year, as gathered from the most 
painstaking and trustworthy Shaksperean authorities, 
let us see if we can make out the sort of individual lie 
necessarily must have been. 

We have seen that the hereditary set of the brain 
in the Shaksper family was in any direction but that 
of mental cultivation; that they were a line of illite- 
rate peasants, or at best inferior yeomen, the last mem- 
ber of it a humble tradesman; en masse, unable to 
read and write, and therefore without book knowl- 
edge. 

We are told by Phillipps that the population of 
Stratford "was a conversational and stagnant" one; 
that "the large majority of the inhabitants had never 
in their lives traveled beyond twenty or thirty miles 
from their homes"; that "outside bibles, and the few 
elementary Latin books, there were not more than two 
or three dozen books in the town' ' . We know that the 
only language spoken and heard was the limited patois 
of Warwickshire, as unintelligible to a Londoner as 
that of Yorkshire or Dorsetshire; we have seen the 
squalid environment in which the boy was born and 
reared; the narrow limits of his schooling, if there 
was any schooling at all; we have seen the butcher's 
apprentice and learned of his disorderly habits; of his 



whithe;r ? 41 

early and discreditable marriage, whicli insured his 
poverty, and bound him to evil companions, and to 
untoward conditions of every sort; and, finally, of 
his flight before the constable to London. In the 
next chapter we shall discover that on reaching Lon- 
don, he was at once attracted towards the public the- 
ater, the vilest place of amusement, and soon after 
associated himself with the players, who, in that age, 
were regarded as disreputable, and by the law were 
held to be no better than rogues and vagabonds, and who 
spent the greater part of every year in strolling through 
England. What must be the future, intellectually 
and morally, of a boy and youth so reared and at last 
sunk into that sort of companionship? 

Dr. Holmes tells us that a child's training begins a 
hundred years before he is born; Herbert Spencer, 
that the great man "is a resultant of an enormous ag- 
gregate of forces that have been co-operating for 
ages' ' ; that we need not expect the child to be radi- 
cally different from the parents, a mathematician from 
one who has no sense of numbers, or a poet from one 
who has no ideality in his composition. 

Galton begins his volume on heredity with the 
words: "I propose to show that a man's natural abili- 
ties are derived by inheritance." He tells us that 
"ability in the long run does not start into existence 
and disappear with equal abruptness, but rather it 
rises on a gradual and regular curve out of the ordi- 
nary level of family life' ' . 

"Whatever may be the natural capacity the future 
of the child in youth will be determined by the influ- 
ences which surround him from the cradle onward. ' ' 



42 SHAKSPBR NOT SHAKESPEARE;. 

Or, as Carlyle puts it, "early culture and nurture de- 
cide whether there shall be a doddered, dwarf bush, 
or a high towering, wide-spreading tree. ' ' And again, 
"The history of a man's childhood is the description 
of his parents and environment". 

Dr. Weisman declares of musical genius, that ' 'with- 
out early stimulus, and a constant opportunity of hear- 
ing and being instructed in the highest music, even 
the greatest genius must remain undeveloped". This 
is as true of literature as of music; no matter what 
the natural capacity may be, if there is no early stim- 
ulus, no reading of books, no training, no contact with 
intellectual and cultivated people, the mind will and 
must necessarily remain undeveloped. 

Does it look as if the capitalized experience of the 
tribe of Shaksper was of a character and volume to 
make this underling at the public theater become the 
flower of the English race, a prodigy of learning ac- 
quired from books, as well as knowledge from obser- 
vation and wisdom by introspection; the "best head in 
the Universe", according to Emerson; "the fullest 
head of which there is any record", according to 
Lowell; the greatest of England's poets. The thing 
is absolutely impossible. No child in the world's his- 
tory, with such antecedents and with such conditions, 
the formative period of his life lost, intellectual facts 
and habits not acquired before manhood, ever did 
blossom forth as a great poet or prose writer, or liter- 
ary man of any mark whatever. Youth is the only 
period in which intellectual habits can be formed; and 
that wasted, there is no remedy. Shakespeare tells 
us: 



WHITHKR ? 43 

"This .'Horning, like the spirit of a youth 
That means to be of note, begins betimes". 

Whoever heard of William Shaksper, in his irre- 
pressible ardor for learning, as out of bed at night 
studying by candle light, or by the kitchen fire, like 
Abraham Lincoln; or up in the early morning, poring 
over his books? There were no books, the town was 
bookless. A bookless neighborhood! The future of 
the boy may be predicted from those two words. He 
may become a successful business man, a rich man, for 
he shares the faculty of accumulation with rats and 
rodents, magpies and crows, and besides he has inher- 
ited what business capacity his father and grandfather 
were possessed of, but a literary man of mark, never! 
"No matter how poor I am ... if the writers 
will enter and take up their abode under my roof 
. . . I shall not want for intellectual companion- 
ship, and I may become a cultivated man." But to 
the unlettered boy in a bookless neighborhood, there 
is no such future. The converse of Dr. Channing's 
proposition is true: If the writers do not enter, etc., I 
may not become a cultivated man. Burns had humble 
beginnings, and his case has been said to run on all 
fours with William Shaksper' s. But that is a mis- 
take. Burns "was taught English well, and by the 
time he was ten or twelve years of age, he was a critic 
in substantives, verbs, and particles. He had a few 
books, among which were the Spectator, Pope's Works, 
Allan Ramsay, and a collection of English songs. 
. . . At about twenty-three, his reading enlarged. 
, , . What books he had, he read and studied 



44 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPKARE. 

thorougMy . " So Chambers tells us. Bums warbled 
his native wood notes wild in the simple language of 
his district, but not in I^atin and Greek, in French 
and Italian; nor did he warble of all the sciences, and 
of all the philosophies, as the author of the Shake- 
speare plays did. 

I read in the "Outlook" for 25th July, 1896, called 
forth by the recent Burns Centennial: "Another erro- 
neous impression about Burns, which has been set 
right by time, is the once widely held belief that he 
was utterly without education. The 'inspired plough- 
man', untutored and untrained, was supposed to have 
sung as the bird sings or the flower grows. Those 
who know anything about the conditions under which 
strong men come to the mastery of their strength, and 
men of genius to the possession of their power, know 
that nothing is achieved without preparation; that the 
very artlessness and simplicity through which the 
heart speaks in entire unconsciousness is won at the 
end of training, not at the beginning. Every great 
artist became great by the development of the quality 
which is in him; he does not become great by acci- 
dent." 

This applies to Shakespeare, the writer of the 
plays, as well as to Bums ; neither of them became 
great by accident, and neither did anything great that 
was not achieved by preparation. Untutored and un- 
trained genuises accomplish nothing. 

John Bunyan was the son of a tinker, but he 
was taught in childhood to read and write, and al- 
though he at one time led a vagrant life, yet we find 
him at the age of 27 spoken of as a zealous preacher, 



WHITHIJR ? 45 

and for five years he pursued this calling before he 
was thrown into Bedford jail. There he wrote his im- 
mortal work, not in Greek and I^atin, under immediate 
inspiration, but "in current English, the vernacular 
of his age," — the only language William Shaksper 
could have written in, had he written at all. Also 
John Bunyan was thoroughly educated in the Bible, as 
any one could see ; and such an education is second 
only to that in Homer. 

Morse, in his lyife of I^incoln, II, 356, brackets 
Lincoln and Shakespeare (of course he means the 
author of the Shakespeare plays, whoever he was) 
together, in that both seem to ' 'run through the whole 
gamut of human nature". Lincoln was descended 
from Massachusetts Puritans, though for two genera- 
tions his family, as pioneers in the wilderness, were 
subject to enforced illiteracy. "He did not come of a 
trifling, silly or stupid family", Mr. Charles A. Dana 
said, in his lecture on Lincoln, at New Haven. The 
boy Abraham had a burning thirst for knowledge. 
He taught himself to read all the books he could get — 
the Bible, Bunyan, and ^sop's Fables. "Lincoln 
learned to read from the spelling book and the Bible ; 
then he borrowed Pilgrim's Progress, and ^sop's 
Fables ; and would sit up half the night reading them 
by the blaze of the logs his own axe had split." 
Montgomery's History U. S., 279. Later he got 
possession of an English Grammar, and still later of 
law books. He was always striving to improve him- 
self, and his natural ability as a thinker with practice 
made him a clear-headed lawyer. Mr. Dana says : 
"He ro^e by hard work and by genius to become one 



46 SHAKSPE^R NOT SHAKKSPBAR:^. 

of the leading lawyers of tlie Illinois bar." It is 
always "hard work" that accomplishes anything, 
genius or no genius. But lyincpln did not talk and 
think in I^atin, as the unlettered, idle boy, William 
Shaksper, is imagined by some of his unreflecting 
admirers to have been inspired to do. 

Mrs. Dall (26) says: "A great deal has been said 
about Shakespeare's deficient education ; but he had 
more education than many eminent men in America. 
One of the most widely read men I ever knew in many 
languages had only one six weeks schooling in his life- 
time, . . . The stories of the learned blacksmith 
(Klihu Burritt) and of Robert Collier are familiar to 
this generation. ' ' But Burritt was far from being the 
child of unlettered parents and grandparents, in an 
ignorant and bookless neighborhood. He himself 
said, in an autobiographical letter in the Worcester 
Spy, of December i, 1841 : "My means of education 
were limited to the advantages of a district school," 
which ended when he was fifteen years of age, on the 
death of his father. He then had to go to work, and 
apprenticed himself to a blacksmith in his native 
village (New Britain, Conn.). ^^ Thither I carried an 
indomitable taste for reading, which I had previously ac- 
quij^ed tht ough the medium of the social library . 
I suddenly conceived the idea of studying I^atin. 
Through the assistance of an elder brother, who had 
himself obtained a collegiate education, I completed 
my Virgil during the evenings of one winter", etc., 
etc. I fail to see anywhere resemblance between the 
environment of Burritt and that of Shaksper. Bur- 
ritt's great lecture, delivered sixty times in the cities 



I 



WHITHER? 47 

and towns of tlie northern U. S. , during the winter of 
1 84 1, was on "Application and Genius", and his 
argument was that genius consists in the capacity for 
hard work, and that nothing great is done without 
labor. The only man known to history who became 
great without study, or preparation, is this William 
Shaksper, as his admirers love to picture him. The 
suggestion of Burritt is as infelicitous as was that of 
Burns, or of Bunyan, or of lyincoln. 

It will be well to notice here the testimony of John 
Milton respecting his own education, and surround- 
ings, and habits, and dispositions, as he came close 
after Shaksper. Could we read such testimony of the 
player there would be no need of the immediate inspi- 
ration theory to account for his omniscience: "For 
after I had from my first years, by the ceaseless dili- 
gence and care of my father, been exercised to the 
tongues and some sciences, as my age could suffer, by 
sundry masters and teachers, it was found that 
whether aught was imposed upon me by them or be- 
taken to be of my own choice, the style, by certain 
vital signs it had, was likely to live; but much latelier, 
in the private academies of Italy, perceiving that some 
trifles which I had in memory, composed at under 
twenty or thereabouts, met with acceptance above 
what was looked for; I began thus far to assent to 
them and divers of my friends here at home, and not 
less to an inward prompting which now grew daily 
upon me, that by labor and incessant study, johied with 
the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave 
something so written to aftertimes, as they should not 
willingly let it die. ' ' Whoever was the author of the 



48 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPKARE;. 

Shakespeare plays, he was uudoubtedly trained after 
the mauuer iu which Miltou was trained, even to the 
schooHng in Italy.* 

Early training at home, masters and teachers, study 
in Itah', and "labor and incessant study" alwaj's! 
Mrhenever the real author of these plaj-s is found, 
that will have been his liistory. 



* Italy ill Elizabetli's age was tlie center of art and learning, 
and students from all western Europe flocked to her schools. 



WILLIAM SHAKSPER ON ENTERING LONDON, 49 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE LIFE OF WII^LIAM SHAKSPER ON ENTERING 
LONDON. 

"It is important to observe that all the early tradi- 
tions to which any value can be attached concur in the 
belief that Shakespeare" (Shaksper) "did not leave 
his native town with histrionic intentions. 
It is extremely unlikely that, at the age of twenty-one, 
he would, voluntarily, have left a wife and three 
children in Warwickshire, for the sake of obtaining a 
miserable position on the London boards." H.-P,, 
I, 82. 

R. G. White says, (Shakespeare Studies): "When 
at twenty-two years of age he fled from Stratford to 
lyondon, we may be sure that he had never seen 
half a dozen books other than his horn book, his 
lyatin Accidence, and a Bible; probably there were not 
half a dozen others in all Stratford. ' ' 

As is seen, Mr. Phillipps makes Shaksper leave 
home at 21 years of age, or in 1585; Mr. White at 
22 years, in 1586. On the other hand, Mr. Fleay 
brings him to lyondon at 23 years, in 1587: "Dr. 
Johnson (in 1765) no doubt accurately reported the 
tradition of his day, when he stated that Shakspere 
came to London a needy adventurer, and lived for a 
time by very mean employments. To the same effect 
is the testimony given by the author of Ratsie's 
Ghost, 1605, where the strolling player, in a passage 



5o Shakspkr not shAkkspkare;. 

reasonably believed to refer to the great dramatist, ob- 
serves in reference to actors: 'I have heard, indeed, of 
some that have gone to lyondon very meanly, and have 
come in time to be exceedingly wealthy' . The author 
of the last named tract was evidently well acquainted 
with the theatrical gossip of his day, so that his nearly 
contemporary evidence on the subject may be fairly 
accepted as a truthful record of the current belief." 
H.-P., I, 79. 

Dr. Johnson says: "When Shakspere fled to Lon- 
don from the terror of a criminal prosecution, his first 
expedient was to wait at the door of the play-house, 
and hold the horses of those who had no servants, 
that they might be ready again after the performance; 
in this office he became so conspicuous for his care and 
readiness, that in a short time every man, as he 
alighted, called for "Will Shakspere, and scarcely any 
other waiter was trusted with a horse while Will 
Shakspere was to be had. This was the first dawn of 
better fortune. Shakspere, finding more horses put 
into his hands than he could hold, hired boys to wait 
under his inspection, who, when Will Shakspere was 
summoned, were to immediately present themselves, 
'I am Shakspere's boy, sir' ; in time Shakspere found 
higher employment' ' . Dr. Johnson received this anec- 
dote from Pope, to whom it had been communicated 
by Rowe; and it appears to have reached Rowe through 
Betterton and Davenant" (actors in the last half of the 
seventeenth century). H.-P., I, 80. 

"Nothing has been discovered respecting the history 
of Shakspere's early theatrical life." H.-P., I, 89. 
' 'The actors . . . were as a rule individual wan- 



' WIIylylAM SHAKSPEJR KNTi^RING I^ONDON. 5 1 

derers, spending a large portion of their time at a dis- 
tance from their families; and there is every reason for 
believing that this was the case with Shakespeare from 
the period of his arrival in L,ondon till nearly the end 
of his life. All the old theatrical companies were 
more or less of an itinerant character, and it is all but 
impossible that he should not have already (by 1587) 
commenced his provincial tours, " H.-P.,I, 95. Pro- 
vincial tours — wandering from town to hamlet, from 
hamlet to town, leading a "blind jade and a hamper", 
or carrying his fardel on his back, towards every 
country fair the length and breadth of the land; giving 
shabby performances in inn-yards when in towns, or 
in out-houses or the open air, in the country, mounted 
" on boards and barrel-heads"; sleeping where night 
catches him, in the next hay-rick, or in the sky-parlor. 
We see the style in Dickens and Thackeray, two hun- 
dred and more years later, and similar vagabonds may 
be seen to-day at every fair in England. Nothing 
changes in rural England, and one age there is the 
same as another. Any chance for acquiring the lan- 
guage and manners of courts in that sort of compan- 
ionship, in that sort of dog-life? Any chance for the 
developing one's vocabulary? Any chance for ground- 
ing oneself in the classics, or in French and Italian? 
Or of becoming expert in the law, or science, or 
philosophy? Any chance for anything but bread and 
meat, and coppers, and moral worsening? I should 
say, not much! 

"It made little difference to Shakspere practically 
whether his family were in London or Stratford, so 
long as he led the life of a player. That was a wan- 



52 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEJARE;. 

dering life, spent in travelling from province to 
province". Dall, 45. 

"In 1587, in the spring, Shakspere gave his assent 
to a proposed settlement of a mortgage on his mother' s 
Asbies estate. For ten years after there is no vestige 
of any communication with his family". Fleay, 8. 
The appearance of Shaksper in Stratford in 1587 is 
corroborated by H.-P. 

"On 5th August, 1596, his son Hamnet died, and he 
unquestionably visited Stratford and renewed relations 
with his family at this time. . . . The natural 
interpretation of such records as have reached us is 
that it was not till touched by the hand of the great 
reconciler, death . . . that he ever visited his 
family at all during the nine years since he left them 
to carve his own way as a strolling player' ' . Fleay, 28. 

lyce says, 187: "It was probably in 1596 that 
Shakespeare returned, after nearly eleven years ab- 
sence, to his native town." In the preceding para- 
graph, we read: "There is a likelihood that the poet's 
wife fared, in the poet's absence, no better than his 
father", (who had gone to the bow-wows). "The 
only contemporary mention made of her between her 
marriage in 1582 and her husband's death (1616) is 
as the borrower at an unascertained date (evidently 
before 1595) of forty shillings from Thomas Whit- 
tington, who had formerly been her father's shepherd. 
The money was unpaid when Whittington died, in 
1 60 1, and he directed his executor to recover the sum 
from the poet", (z. <?., player Shaksper) "and dis- 
tribute it among the poor of Stratford." 

' 'There is not a particle of evidence respecting his 



WILI^IAM SHAKSPBR ON ENTERING I.ONDON. 53 

career during the next five years" (that is to say, frora 
1587), "until he is discovered as a rising actor and 
dramatist, in 1592. This interval must have been the 
chief period of Shakespeare's literary education. Re- 
moved prematurely from school, residing with illiterate 
relations in a bookless neighborhood, thrown in the 
midst of occupations adverse to scholastic progress, it 
is difficult to believe that, when he first left Stratford, he 
was not all but destitute of polished accomplishments'' \ 
H.-P., I, 95- 

"Although Shakespeare had exhibited a taste for 
poetic composition" * (he had written the well-known 
lampoon of the Lucys, and the doggerel of John-a- 
Combe, as Mr. Phillipps has previously told) "before 
his first departure from Stratford, all traditions agree 
in the statement that he was a recognized actor before 
he joined the ranks of the dramatists. This latter 
event appears to have occurred on March 3rd, 1592, 
when a new drama, entitled Henry VI, was brought 
out", etc. Id., I, 97. 

I remark here that when Mr. Phillipps says that 
Shaksper ' ' is discovered as a rising actor and drama- 
tist' ' , or that he was a recognized actor before he joined 

* Dr. Drake says, Pt. II, ch. 11: "Of his inclination to this 
elegant branch of literature (poetry) we have an early proof, 
in the mode of retaliation which he adopted, in consequence of 
his prosecution by Sir Thomas L,ucy." This well-known ef- 
fusion begins. 

"A parliamente member, a justice of peace, 
At home a poor scare crow, at London an asse, 
If Lowsie is Lucy, as some volk miscalle it. 
Then Lucy is lowsie whatever befall it," etc, 



54 SHAKSPBR NOT SHAKEJSPBJARB. 

the ranks of the dramatists" (in 1592), we are to un- 
derstand simply that, by 1592, the plays now attributed 
to "Shakespeare" had begun to appear, that is all. 
By assuming that William Shaksper wrote these plays, 
he naturally makes him out a dramatist, but in his 
two volumes there is no reason given why he should 
do this, — not one word that connects William Shak- 
sper with the authorship of the plays. Unless Mr. 
Phillipps can justify his action by authority, he is 
robbing Peter to pay Paul. Peter naturally objects. 

As to Shaksper being then a recognized actor, the 
only proof of it adduced by Mr. Phillipps is to be 
found in Greene's complaint against ' 'an upstart-crow, 
beautified with our feathers, that with histyger's heart 
wrapped in a Player's Hide supposes that he is as well 
able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; 
and being an absolute Johannes-fac-totum is in his 
own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country' ' . Phil- 
lipps says, 97: "In this year (1592), as we learn 
on unquestionable authority" (Greene's, as above), 
"Shakespeare (Shaksper) was first rising into notice, 
so that the history then produced, now known as the 
I Henry VI, was, in all probability, his earliest, com- 
plete dramatic work. . . . Robert Greene had 
travestied a line from one of Shakspeare's then recent 
compositions, 'O tiger's heart, wrapp'd in a woman's 
hide'. This line is of extreme importance as includ- 
ing the earliest record of words composed by the great 
dramatist. It forms part of a vigorous speech which 
is as Shakesperean in its natural characterial fidelity 
as it is Marlowean in its diction' ' . This line was from 
the play 3 Henry VI, and Phillipps' argument, and his 



WII.I.IAM SHAKSPKR ON ENTERING LONDON. 55 

only argument, is that, because Shakespeare wrote 
that play, the "Shake-scene" of Greene must have 
been intended for that ' 'bard of our admiration' ' . We 
will see about this a little further on. There is good 
reason for the line quoted being Marlowean in its 
diction ! 

Turning to Ingleby, 3, he says: "That Shake- 
speare (Shaksper) was the upstart-crow, and one of 
the purloiners of Greene's plumes, is put beyond a 
doubt by the following considerations: i. That there 
was no such word as Shake-scene (z <?., a tragedian).* 
How is that for a reason? 2. That the line in 
italics is a parody on one which is found in "The 
True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, 1595, and 
also in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part III, Act. I, sec. 
4. 3. That Marlowe and Robert Greene were (prob- 
ably) the joint authors of the two parts of the Con- 
tention, and of the True History, etc., which furnished 
Parts II and III of Henry VI with their prima stamina, 
and a considerable number of lines." These are the 
reasons given by two distinguished Shakespeare com- 
mentators for holding the Shake-scene of Greene to 
be William Shaksper, an obscure, and up to 1592, un- 
mentioned and unnoticed player. The principal rea- 
son of Ingleby, which is identical with the only one of 
Phillipps, is that this line quoted was from a Shake- 

* Ingleby makes "tragedian" here synonymous with "Shake- 
scene"; and instances Jonson's lines — "To hear thy Buskin 
tread, and shake a stage"; and also a passage in The Puritaine, 
where Pye-boord says: "Have you never seen a stalking- 
stamping Player, that will raise a tempest with his toung, 
a.nd thunder with his heels".? 



56 SHAKSPEJR NOT SHAKESPEARE;. 

speare play, meaning a play written by William Shak- 
sper. But as distinguished commentators as Ingleby 
or Phillipps attribute the play in question to Marlowe, 
or to him in collaboration with other playwrights. 

"It is nearly as certain as anything can be which 
depends upon cumulative and collateral evidence, that 
the better part of what is best in the serious scenes of 
King Henry VI is mainly the work of Marlowe. That 
he is at any rate the principal author of the second 
and third play passing under that name among the 
works of Shakespeare, can hardly be now a matter of 
debate among competent judges". Knc. Brit., Mar- 
lowe (Swinburne). 

Fleay, ii8, says: "Margaret is not Shakespeare's 
creation; she is Marlowe's. Shakespeare had no hand 
in the plays on the Contention of York and Lancaster, 
(2 Henry VI), and but a slight one in i Henry VI. 
Marlowe had a chief hand in i Henry VI, and York 
and I^ancaster; probably wrote the whole of Richard 
Duke of York, 3 Henry VI." Marlowe was killed in 
a brawl i June, 1592, and Fleay says that his plays 
"The Taming of the Shrew", "Edward III", "Ham- 
let", and "3 Henry VI", passed from Sussex's men 
to Lord Strange's men, (of whom William Shaksper 
was one). 

On 279: ' 'The unhistorical but grandly classical con- 
ception of Margaret, the Cassandra prophetess, the 
Helen- Ate of the house of Lancaster, which binds the 
whole tetralogy (The three Henry VI and the Richard 
III) into one work, is undoubtedly due to Marlowe, 
and the consummate skill with which he has fused the 
heterogeneous contributions of his coadjutors in the two 



WILIylAM SHAKSPE^R ON KNTEJRING I^ONDON. 57 

earlier Henry VI plays is no less worthy of admira- 
ion." 

Mr. Ivee, 59, et seq., while crediting Shakespeare 
with the best that is in the three Henry VI plays, can- 
not but admit that ' 'criticism has proved beyond doubt 
that in these plays Shakespeare did no more than add, 
revise, and correct other men's work. In the first, 
the scene in the Temple Garden, the dying speech of 
Mortimer, and perhaps the wooing of Margaret by 
Suffolk, alone bear the impress of his style." In the 
other two "the revising hand can be traced." On 61 
he tells us that it was to Marlowe and Lyly that 
"Shakespeare's indebtedness as a writer of comedy or 
tragedy was material. . . . His early tragedies 
often reveal him in the character of a faithful disciple 
of (Marlowe) that vehement delineator of tragic pas- 
sion. His early comedies disclose a like relationship 
between him and I^yly." Mr. I^ee tells us that lyove's 
Labour's Lost is in the style of Lyly. "Richard III 
and Richard II, with the story of Shylock later, plainly 
disclose a conscious resolve to follow in Marlowe's foot- 
steps. . . . Throughout Richard III the effort to 
emulate Marlowe is undeniable. Richard II clearly 
suggests Marlowe' s Edward II. Shakespeare' s tragedy 
closely imitates Marlowe. ' ' 

Marlowe's contribution to the "Shakespeare" part- 
nership, following Meres' list of the Shakespeare's plays 
enumerated in 1598, was as four to twelve, and Rich- 
ard III was not included in this list. It is seen above 
that "Edward III" was one of Marlowe's plays as 
well as ' 'The Taming of the Shrew' ' . So also prob- 
ably was the Venus and Adonis and the Lucrece. It 



58 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKi^SPEARS. 

is interesting therefore to read in the Boston Tran- 
script of Aug. nth, 1897, these words: "In comment- 
ing upon the recent performance in lyondon by the 
Elizabethan Stage Society, Mr. William Archer writes 
in the London World: 'While Arden of Feversham 
was being recited, a still small voice in the background 
of one's consciousness kept up a running protest 
against the theory that this was the work of Shake- 
speare. Then came the scenes from Edward III. Be- 
fore twenty lines had been spoken, the still small voice 
aforesaid was whispering ' 'Shakespeare' ' , — and even as 
the recitation proceeded the whisper grew louder and 
more emphatic , Shakespeare ! Manifestly Shakespeare ! 
Shakespeare all over! Shakespeare without the shadow 
of a doubt! . . . What other poet has at his com- 
mand such unchastened wealth of imagery, such well- 
nourished smoothness of style? If this be not Shake- 
speare's work, all I can say is that some nameless poet 
has out-Shakespeared Shakespeare'". Well, that is 
right, for Marlowe was the strongest member of the 
Shakespeare syndicate up to 1598, and the most pro- 
lific. 

Wendell says, 71: "The weight of opinion seems 
to favor the supposition that Greene, Peele, Kyd, 
and Marlowe had a hand in them" (/. e. the 3 parts 
of Henry VI), "and so far as Shakespeare touched 
them, it was by way of collaboration, interpolation or 
revision." Curious idea, that an untaught country 
boy, equipped with nothing at all but an unintelligible 
patois, should have undertaken, or should have been 
employed, to revise plays written by past masters of 
the art of play writing, every one of them a graduate 



WILIvIAM SHAKSPEJR ON" EJNTEIRING LONDON. 59 

of one of the great universities, and one of them 
Marlowe? * The proposition that Shake-scene was in- 
tended by Greene for the player Shaksper ma}^ as well 
be dropped from consideration if the foregoing are the 
only grounds in its favor. 

As I have said, Phillipps brings young Shaksper to 
London in 1585, or 1586, he is not certain which; 
thinks he returned to Stratford on a visit in 1587, and 
he tells us there is not a particle of evidence respecting 
his career between 1587 and 1592. Fleay, 8, makes 
Shaksper leave Stratford (the first time) "in or about 
1587 in company with Lord Leicester's players, who 
are known to have visited Stratford in 1587. There 
is not one iota of proof of this, but Mr, Fleay guesses 
it must have been so. Shaksper would then be about 
23 years of age. He was, according to Phillipps, an 
ignorant young man, "almost destitude of polished ac- 
complishments", who so far had "sow'd cockles, 
reaped no corn' ' ; and all the authorities who accept 
the traditions agtee that at first he got employment in 
London under very humble terms. He held horses 
outside the play house door, then was "servitour" in- 
side, and so worked his way up. That is one view of 
"William Shaksper. Fleay, on the other hand, starts 
him at once on reaching London, in 1587, studying, 
acting and learning how to write plays. He gives no 
authority whatever for doing so, but the exigencies of 
the case make it necessary that Shaksper should begin 

* " It is worthy of remark, that all these founders and first 
builders-up of the regular drama in England, were, nearly if 
not absolutely without an exception, classical scholars, and men 
who had received a university education". Craik.,Eng. lyit. 



6o SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKESPEJARK. 

at once. Of course Mr. Fleay throws aside every 
tradition and testimony. If William Shaksper wrote 
the Shakespeare plays, which began to appear at least 
as early as 1589, or within two years after he got to 
London, no time was to be lost. So we read in the 
Hist. lyond. Stage, 74, this : ' 'During these seven 
prentice years (1587 to 1594) while Shaksper was 
learning his business as a stage actor from Allen and 
Burbage, and his business as a playwright from his 
coadjutors, Marlowe and Peele, etc." 

In the lyife, 9, Mr. Fleay makes Shaksper join 
Leicester's players at Stratford in 1587, and (10) 
comes "to London as a poor strolling player ; he was 




associated already with the most noted comedians of 
the time, Kempe and Pope ; and in Allen he had the 
advantage of studying the method of the greatest 
tragic actor that had yet trod the English stage.* 

* I give cuts of two of Shaksper's player associates, William 



WII.I.IAM SHAKSPKR ON KNTKRING LONDON. 6 1 



But he did not remain content with merely acting; 
he now commenced as author. ' ' An instance of what 
Mr. Fleay himself styles a mischievously fertile im- 
agination as flagrant as anything in Baynes. By 

Kemp, or Kempe, and 
Richard Tarleton; Kempe 
is said by Shaksper's bi- 
ographers to have been 
his instructor in comedy. 
The cut of him is copied 
from Rolfe's "Shakes- 
peare the Boy", which is 
a fac-simile of a wood 
cut prefixed to Kempe's 
"Nine Daies Wonder". 
It discovers "the most 
noted comedian" as a jig 
dancer, cutting monkey 
shines. (Cut, preceding 
page). 

The cut of Tarleton I 
have taken from a paper 
by Alexander Cargill, in 
Scribner's Magazine for 
May, 1891, "from a draw- 
ing published in 1792, in 
Mr. (Henry) Irving's col- 
lection." 

On page 166, Hist. Lon- 
don Stage, Mr. Fleay tells 
us that "the time for 
Tarleton and Kempe clowneries and jigs had passed," etc. 
Why not Shaksper clowneries as well ? If one of these pretty 
fellows was his instructor, and the other his associate, it is 
altogether probable that a true portrait of William Shaksper 
would be close to the pattern of Tarleton and Kempe. 




62 SHAESPKR NOT SHAKESPIJARK. 

1592, Mr. Fleay represents him as "a rising drama- 
tist," that is a writer of plays. If that were so, of 
course it would follow that years must already have 
passed in essaying to write plays, and we are informed 
of much that he did before he reached that elevation. 
In 1589 there was performed the first play which he is 
known to have written. ' 'The play of lyove' s I^abour ' s 
lyost (first performed in 1589) is undoubtedly m the main 
the earliest example left of Shakespeare' s work,^^ p. 103. 
This implies that in Mr. Fleay' s opinion there were 
earlier plays — or there was earlier work — ^which has 
not come down to us. Most likely Mr. Fleay is 
correct, if by Shakspere we are to understand the 
author of the plaj^s. lyove's I^abour's L^ost may have 
been his first dramatic essay left, but Mr. Fleay is 
talking of William Shaksper, the Stratford man, the 
player, and that is altogether a different matter, "a 
horse of another color," as Shakespeare says. As 
Mr. Fleay puts it, this ignorant Stratford clown, 
whom Phillipps has told us about, within two years 
after he enters London, at which entry he necessarily 
spoke a dialect as unintelligible as that of a Yorkshire 
farmer of to-day, during the whole of which time he 
was employed about the theater, or in strolling up and 
down England, is discovered to have written a play of 
high life, with kings, princesses, lords, ladies, em- 
bassadors as almost the only characters ; full of I^atin 
and French, quotations from Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, 
bristling with classical allusions and with learned dis- 
sertations of philology and orthography ; ' 'which were 
ridiculous," as Ben Jonson said* of an utterance of 



■WIIvI,IAM SHAKSPER ON KNTE^RING I^ONDON. 63 

this player Shaksper. The modern phrase would be — 
' 'Tell that to the marines. ' ' 

Horace Walpole asks: "Why are there so few gen- 
teel comedies, but because most of them are written by 
men not of that sphere ? Ktheredge, Congreve, Van- 
brugh, Cibber, wrote genteel comedy because they 
lived in the best company; Wycherley and Dryden 
wrote as if they had only lived in the Rose Tavern ". 
That is sensible. Shakespeare tells us: "Thou wilt 
not utter what thou dost not know". What could 
William Shaksper know of "that sphere"? Had he 
"lived in the best company"? On the contrary, he 
lived in the lowest, most debauched and vulgar com- 
pany. The comedies of William Shakespeare were 
"genteel comedy", and showed plainly that their au- 
thor was of "that sphere", and had "lived in the best 
company" — a proof that ought to be convincing to 
every one that the player had no hand in them. 

Mr. lyce also believes that Love's Labour's Lost was 
Shakespeare's first play, and discourses of it thus, 50: 

"The subject-matter suggests that its author had al- 
ready enjoyed extended opportunities of surveying Lon- 
don life and manners. Love's Labour 's Lost embodies 
keen observation of contemporary life in many ranks 
of society, both in town and country, while the 
speeches of Biron clothe much sound philosophy in 
masterly rhetoric. ... It (the plot) is not known 
to have been borrowed, and stands quite alone in 
travestying known traits and incidents of current so- 
cial and political life." 

Hazlitt, on L. L. L- , says: "The style savors more 
of the .pedantic spirit of Shakespeare's time than of his 



64 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPKARK. 

own genius; more of controversial divinity than of the 
inspiration of the muse. It transports us quite as 
much to the manners of the court and the quirks of 
courts at law, as to the scenes of nature. . . . 
Shakespeare has set himself to indicate the tone of 
polite conversation then prevailing among the fair, the 
witty and the learned. . . . The observations on 
the use and abuse of study, and on the power of 
beauty to quicken the understanding as well as the 
senses, are excellent' ' . The husband of Ann Whately 
was a likely fellow to be writing on the power of 
beauty to quicken the understanding, and the igno- 
ramus to be writing on the use and abuse of study! 
And the idea that a first effort of a youth of his caliber 
and experiences would treat of the usages of polite 
society, or should be filled with controversial di- 
vinity or quirks of courts of law, is too nonsensical for 
consideration. If the play in question appeared in 
1589, it was written before that date, and by another 
hand than that of Stratford, ex necessitate, and the 
question of the authorship of the Shakespeare plays is 
settled right here and once for all, so far as William 
Shaksper is concerned. Mr. Fleay continues (13): 
"lyove's I^abour 's Won must have been written about 
the same time as I^ove's I^abour 's I^ost, and before the 
end of 1 590, the Comedy of Errors probably appeared 
in its original form". (On p. 33, Mr. Fleay tells us 
that Much Ado About Nothing which appeared in 
1598, was probably a re-cast of lyove's lyabour's 
Won"). In 1 59 1, the Two Gentlemen of Verona and 
Romeo and Juliet, "as originally written by Shake- 
speare and some coadjutor w'ere most likely produced". 



WII^IvIAM SHAKSPER ON KNTERING LONDON. 65 

That is to say, five plays appeared between 1589 and 
1591, anonymously, acknowledged by no author, treat- 
ing, as did lyove's I^abour 's lyost, of high life, in Italy, 
Sicily and Asia, which commentators have chosen — 
without one spark of evidence, entirely unsupported 
by contemporary testimony — to attribute to a practical 
butcher who fled in disgrace from Stratford to I^on- 
don in 1587; who, in I^ondon, earned his bread as a 
horse boy, or as attached to one of the public theaters, 
the then lowest place of public entertainment, not so 
elevated in tone or morals as is the average variety 
show at the close of the nineteenth century. And 
thousands of books, big and little, have been written to 
uphold this remarkable proposition, that learned writ- 
ings can issue from ignorance; that a man, who in 
1585 to 1587, was "all but destitute of polished ac- 
complishments", in 1859 was publishing, or putting 
on the stage, finished five-act plays, all of them de- 
scribing — ^what ? The life of the villagers at Stratford, 
rustic life anywhere, the experiences of a boy born 
and brought up as he had been? Not at all! 
But describing the lives of princes and princesses, 
lords and ladies, gentlemen, courts, camps, for- 
eign cities, foreign manners, customs and surround- 
ings; in short, experiences of high life of every sort, 
as well as all sorts of learning. All of which implies 
years of study, of travel, and of time spent in ac- 
quiring the knowledge to be eventually made use of 
in the plays. This is as true of 1587 as it would be of 
1900. Mr. Phillipps' interval of five years, during 
which there is not a particle of evidence respecting 
the career of young Shaksper, and which therefore 



66 shakspe;r Nor shakkspeiark. 

comes accidentally handy for the period of his educa- 
tion — because he either got it then, or he never got it 
at all — ^will not serve. Instead of getting his educa- 
tion between 1587 and 1592, if this Stratford youth 
was the real William Shakespeare, by 1587, he had 
already been educated to the highest point, and was 
capable of writing, and actually did write, one play 
after another in swift succession, so that five had ap- 
peared by 1 59 1.* 

Now, unless we are prepared to cast aside all the 
traditions and testimonies, as Mr. Fleay does, and 
start with a blank page as regards William Shaksper, 
we have reached an obstacle which is insurmountable, 
that makes it absolutely impossible that William, the 
aforesaid, had anything to do with the production of 
these plays. 

Professor T. I^. Baynes, also, the editor of the last 
edition of the Kncyclopedia Brittanica, and the author 
of the wonderful life of Shakspere therein, seeing the 
catastrophe imminent, saves himself and his baggage 
by throwing overboard the testimonies and traditions 
and putting helm up. By this operation he escapes 
embarrassing difficulties. "I know nothing about 
William Shaksper, he is a name and nothing else. I 
know nothing of William Shakespeare. Go to; I 



* Wendell says, p. 97: "In the course of six years at least, 
the years from 23 to 29, he had certainly succeeded in establish- 
ing himself as an actor, in writing, wholly or in part, at least 
seven noteworthy plays which have survived (Titus Andronicus, 
3 of Henry VI, Love's Labour 's Lost, The Comedy of Errors, 
The Two Gentlemen of Verona) and in composing at least one 
poem of the highest contemporary fashion," 



WII.I.IAM SHAKSPKR ON KNTBRING LONDON, 67 

will create a half human, half superhuman man; the 
kind of man the true Shakespeare must have been 
as evidenced by his works, and pretend that he came 
from Stratford, and will call him William Shakspere". 

Mr. Fleay's books were not written to prove that 
William Shaksper wrote the Shakespeare plays, but to 
show from internal evidence of the plays, in what 
chronological order they must have been written. 
The books evince prodigious labor, and Mr. Fleay is 
one of the wisest of the Shakespeare commentators. 
He is probably right as to the chronology, but if he 
had only told us what the connection was between the 
plays and the player William Shaksper, he would have 
added a thousand fold to the value of his book. Like 
^11 the rest of these commentators, he assumes the 
Connection, but right there the Shaksper case breaks 
down. No man has ever proved or shown such a con- 
nection, or the probability of one, and consequently 
there has been a vast deal of threshing of straw. 

In 1593, the Venus and Adonis was published by 
Richard Field, in whose name it had been entered in 
the Stationer's Register, (equivalent to copyright of 
later ages). There was no name of author on the 
title-page, but the Dedication was to the Earl of 
Southampton, and was signed "William Shakespeare". 
This is the first appearance of the name Shakespeare 
in literature. It was the pseudonym of a true poet 
and of a scholar, besides a man of the world. The 
author was no unlettered boy brought up among the 
peasants of the back counties. In the year 1594, the 
lyucrece issued by the same publisher, also without 



68 SHAKSPSR NOT SHAKESPEIARBJ. 

name, and also dedicated to Southampton. As Dr. 
Morgan says, "almost everybody in those days dedi- 
cated things to Southampton; the dedication of poems 
to Southampton was rather the rule or the fashion of 
the time than otherwise." It did not imply acquaint- 
ance, much less intimacy, with his lordship. 

"These poems are the composition of an educated 
mind, and of an author who was imbued with the true 
poetic spirit. The Venus and Adonis is suggested by 
Ovid's story in the Metamorphoses X, XII to XV; 
but there is no such servile following of its original as 
would have been adopted by a novice who was reading 
it for the first time in a translation. On the contrary, 
the author strikes out from it with a boldness only to 
be expected from an intimate familiarity with the 
original." T. W. White, 27. 

Mr. White gives reasons which prove to him that 
both poems were written by Marlowe, Marlowe had 
the education, temperament, and ability to write such 
a poem as Venus and Adonis. William Shaksper had 
not the education, vocabulary, ability, or experience to 
write such a poem, even had he had the capacity. 

' 'The place and value of Christopher Marlowe as a 
leader among English poets, it would be almost impos- 
sible for historical critics to overestimate. To none of 
them all perhaps have so many of the greatest among 
them been so deeply and so directly indebted. He 
first, and he alone, guided Shakespeare into the right 
way of work; his music, in which there is no echo of 
any man's before him, finds its own echo in the more 
prolonged but hardly more exalted harmony of Milton. 
He is the greatest discoverer, the most daring and in- 



.WII^XIAM SHAKSPlgR ON EN'CEIRING I^ONDON. 69 

Spired pioneer in all our poetic literature. Before him, 
there was neither genuine blank verse, nor a genuine 
tragedy in our language. After his arrival the way 
was prepared, the paths were made straight for Shake- 
speare." Swinburne, Bnc. Brit., "Marlowe." 

Up to the beginning of 1598, seventeen of the now 
received Shakespeare plays had been performed, the 
commentators assure us, and seven of these had 
been printed, all anonymously. When the first play 
published bearing the name of Shakespeare issued, 
I^ove's I^abours I^ost, in 1598, the title page did not 
claim that it was written by Shakespeare, but that it 
was "newly corrected and augmented by W. Shake- 
spere". So it was not till nine or ten years had 
passed after the first of these plays had been performed 
at the theater, (according to Mr. Fleay's chronology) 
that the name Shakespere, or Shakspere, or Shake- 
speare, was ever seen on the title page of a play. 

I have not the least idea that I^ove's I^abours Lost 
was written by the man who wrote Hamlet; or that 
the Two Gentlemen of Verona was written by that 
man, or that the first and last of these were written by 
the same man; or that the Comedy of Errors was 
written by him; or that Troilus and Cressida was 
written by the author of any one of the four. An 
extended analysis of these plays shows that the 
vocabulary of each is as distinct as if Jones and Smith 
and Brown and Robinson had written them. Young 
and inexperienced authors do not write books in differ- 
ent styles, with different vocabularies. When one has 
read Diana of the Crossways, he has the life-style of 
George Meredith; Far from the Madding Crowd, of 



70 SHAKSPE^R NOT SHAKEISPKARE^, 

Hardy; Pride and Prejudice, of Jane Austen; Waver- 
ley, of Scott. It was thought a surprising thing when 
Bulwer was found to have written The Caxtons. He 
changed his style completely, but he was a writer of 
long experience, and deliberately set himself to the 
task. Bulwer died an elderly man, but he did not 
live long enough to enable him to discover a third 
style. If the five plays above-named as attributed to 
"Shakespeare" are in five different styles, (and the 
critics declare them so to be) then five men wrote 
them. Meiklejohn says of Shakespeare: "He has 
written in a greater variety of styles than any other 
author. 'Shakespeare,' says Professor Craik, 'has in- 
vented twenty styles.' " 

Player Shaksper signed his name in a different style 
every time he wrote it, if we may judge by the five 
extant specimens claimed by his admirers to have 
come from his pen, although two of them were written 
in the same half hour, and the other three in the same 
ten minutes. That is proof positive that four of the 
five signatures, at least, were written for him by other 
persons. If the Shakespeare plays exhibit twenty 
different styles, that is proof enough that no one man, 
and no dozen men, wrote them. I agree with Mr. 
Reed, who says: "It is evident that 'Shakespeare' 
was a favorite nom de plume with the dramatic wits 
of that age;" in proof of which he calls to mind the 
many plays, not printed in the First Folio, which 
issued for years under the name of William Shake- 
speare.* 

* Judge Stotsenborg saj^s: "The facts justify the student in 
believing that the plays produced in the Elizabethan era, gen- 



WII.I.IAM SHAKSPE^R ON SNl^ERlNG- I^ONDON. 7 1 

These anonymous plays were: 

1. Henry VI, 2d Part, 1594. 

2. Henry VI, 3d Part, 1595. 

3. Richard II, i597- 

4. Richard III, i597- 

5. Romeo and Juliet, i597- 

6. Henry VI, ist Part, 1596. 

During the next years certain of the series of plays 
afterwards called "Shakespeare's" were printed under 
the name either of Shakespeare or Shake-speare (with 
a hyphen); while others of the same series, and new 
editions of the older, anonymous, plays were printed 
without name. Other plays which were not included 
in the Folio of "the collected works of William Shake- 
speare", in 1623, and which are not to-day attributed 
to that author, bore the same imprinted name of 
Shakespeare. 

erally speaking, were the work of collaborators. I get this from 
the best authority of that period, viz., the diary of Philip 
Henslowe. This diary contains minute, truthful, and valuable 
information respecting the history and condition of the English 
drama from 1591 to 1609. It contains the names of plays iden- 
tical with or very 'similar to the titles of the Shakespeare plays. 
It nowhere mentions Shakspere's name; it shows that the En- 
glish dramatists wrote plays and sold them for trifling sums to 
Henslowe; it shows that these plays thereafter became the prop- 
erty of Henslowe, or of his company of actors; it shows that 
certain dramatists were employed and paid by Henslowe to re- 
vise and dress and adapt the popular plays so purchased, to suit 
the tastes of the frequenters of the theater; and it also shows 
that the principal plays were composed hurriedly by collabora- 
tors, by two or three, and then again by four, five or six play- 
writers, who, after they received their pay, cared nothing more 
for their productions." — ^Ind. News, 5th May, 1897. 



72 



SHAKSPKR NOT SHAE:eSPE;ARi;. 



1595. 
1600. 
1600. 
1600. 
1600. 
1600. 
1600. 
1605. 
1607, 
1608. 
1608. 
1608. 



These were : 

lyocrine, 

Sir John Oldcastle, . . . 

Thomas lyord Cromwell, . 

Edward III, 

The Birth of MerUn, . . 

Mucedorus, 

Merry Devil of Edmonton, 

The lyondon Prodigal, . 

Puritan Widow of Watling St. 

Arthur of Feversham, . 

Yorkshire Tragedy, 

Arraignment of Paris, . 
The name "Shakespeare" was used for the work of 
a number of authors. But there is no evidence that 
it was put on the title page of a play by any authority 
other than that of the printers.* The Venus and lyU- 
crece had been popular, and had run through many 
editions. Apparently, the printers, or some of them — 
for there were several concerned — thought that the 
pseudonym of the author of these poems was a good 
one to help sell plays, and clapped on their books the 
name of "William Shakespeare." In 1599, Jaggard 
printed as ' 'William Shakespeare's' ' , a volume of poems 
under the title of the Passionate Pilgrim. This con- 
tained four sonnets (by Shakespeare) and one poem 
from I^ove's I/abours Lost; the larger part of the vol- 
ume was made up of verses by Barnfeild and other 
authors. Fleay, Life, 137. Collier says, Life, 6, "The 



*Tlius, Lee, 301: "The sixteen Quartos were publishers' -ven- 
tures, and were undertaken without the co-operation of the 
author. ' ' 



WII.I.IAM SHAKSPE;r on entering l^ONDON, 73 

most noticeable proof of the advantage which a book- 
seller conceived he should derive from the announce- 
ment that the work he published was by our poet, is 
afforded by the title page of his dispersed sonnets, 
which was ushered into the world as 'Shakespeare's 
Sonnets' in very large capitals, as if that mere fact 
would be held sufficient recommendation. ' ' * 

No objection, so far as now appears, was made by 
anybody having an interest in the plays, and presently 
it became to be the custom to print under the same 
name, and the world accepted this sobriquet as the 
true title of the unknown author or authors. As early 
as 1595, it had apparently been suspected that the au- 
thor of the Venus and Adonis had written a play, for 
we find John Weever, in that year, (Ing. 16), pub- 
lishing some lines beginning 

"Honie-tong'd Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue, 
I swore Apollo got them and none other, 

Rose — check't Adonis 

Chaste Lncretia 

Romea-Richard, more whose name I know not, ' ' etc, 

* "Owing perhaps to the apathy exhibited by Shakespeare 
(Shaksper) on this occasion," i.e. the Jaggard publication — "a 
far more remarkable operation in the same kind of knavery was 
perpetrated in the latter part of the following year by the pub- 
lisher of the First Part of the lyife of Sir John Oldcastle, 1600, a 
play, &c. Although this drama is not only known to have been 
composed by other dramatists, but also to have belonged to a 
theatrical company with whom Shakespeare (Shaksper) had 
then no connection, it was unblushingly announced as his work 
by the publisher, Thomas Pavier. Two editions were issued in 
the same year by Pavier, the one most largely distributed being 
that which was assigned to tlie pen of the great dramatist and 
another to' which no name was attached." H.-P., I, 180. 



74 SHAKSPKE. NOT^ SHAKIESPEiARE;. 

What the Romea was does not appear. It could not 
have been the Romeo and JuHet of Shakespeare, be- 
cause that was first played in 1596, according to Phil- 
lipps, and the first quarto of the play bears the date 
1597. The Richard may have been Richard III, and- 
if that and the poems were written by Marlowe, Meres 
would have guessed correctly. 

No other mention of the name (Shakespeare) occurs 
until 1598, when, spelled Shakespere, it appeared for 
the first time on the title page of a play, lyove' s Labour 's 
lyost. Then, that same year, w^e have Francis Meres 
attributing by their names twelve plays to "Shake- 
speare", to-wit. Two Gentlemen of Verona, Comedy 
of Errors, Love's lyabour's Won, Midsummer Night's 
Dream, Merchant of Venice, King John, Titus Andro- 
nicus, seven, none of which had been published; and 
Love's Labour's Lost, Richard II, Richard III, Henry 
IV, and Romeo and Juliet, five, which had been pub- 
lished anonymously, with the exception of Love's La- 
bour' s Lost, just out. In the same connection, Meres 
attributes to Shakespeare the Venus, the Lucrece, and 
"his sugred sonnets among his private friends." 

Therefore, up to 1598, nine years after William 
Shaksper is credited by Mr. Fleay with bringing out 
the play of Love's Labour's Lost, "Shakespeare" had 
been mentioned by contemporary writers, Ingleby being 
witness, but three times; once by an anonymous au- 
thor, in 1594, who spoke of Lucrece only; once, in 1595, 
by Weever, who spoke of the poems, and also of 
Romea- Richard; once, 1595-6, by Carew, who com- 
pares Shakespeare with Catullus; ("Will you read 
Virgil ? Take the Karl of Surrey. Catullus ? Shake- 



WII.1.IAM SHAKSPI^R ON E^N'TE^RING LONDON. 75 

speare and Marlowe's fragments", — referring to the 
poems). That is all to Meres. One man, namely, 
Weever, in 1595, suspected that the hand which wrote 
the Venus^ also wrote Richard, but not another contem- 
porary in the years up to 1598 spoke of the Shake- 
speare of the Venus and Adonis as the writer of plays; 
and certainly no one hinted, and there is no evidence 
extant that any one thought, ("for what his heart 
thinks, his tongue speaks' ' , as Shakespeare says) , or 
dreamed, that it was a player at a public theater, one 
Shaksper or Shakspur or Shaksberd, who was turning 
out these fine things. That is very curious, in the 
light of the modern theory of the authorship, and is 
suggestive. It shows for one thing, that by 1598, or 
within eleven or twelve years after the player Shaksper 
became connected with the theater, there was no 
knowledge and no claim that the player William Shak- 
sper was the author of the Shakespeare plays or poems. 
According to Ben Jonson (Discoveries) this player was 
a rattle-headed man, often talking too much, and thus 
making himself ridiculous — the last man to hide his 
light under a bushel. Had he written any sort of a 
play, he would have cackled everlastingly; had he 
been capable of writing a Shakespeare play, he would 
not have been rattle-headed, and would not have been 
found in the company of those players. 

Up to 1598, then, the Shaksper myth had not got a 
start, and as I shall in due time show, it never did get 
a start till years after the player was dead, or in 1623, 
and then a discreditable one. 

As to player Shaksper, or the manager of the Cur- 
tain Theater, all he had to do with these matters was 



76 shakspe;r not SHAK:^sp:eARE;. 

to take what the gods provided. Here were plays 
running loose, and his public theater might find in one 
or other of them special scenes to use as interludes, or 
in pantomine, or travesty, that would amuse an igno- 
rant and brutal audience, murders by wholesale, or 
wholesale ribaldry. Had he been either writer or 
owner of the plays, they never would have been 
printed. It was not to the interest of a theater that its 
stock of plays, interludes, shows, should be given to 
the public. They formed the capital of the company 
and were guarded with jealous care.* Drake, Part 
II, chapter 7, says: "The author either sold the copy- 
right of his plays to the theater, or retained it in his 
own hands. In the former instance . . . the 
proprietors of the theater took care to secure the per- 
formance of the piece exclusively to their own com- 
pany," and it was their "interest to defer its publi- 
cation as long as possible". Where a play was sold 
to the theater, and the booksellers found ways to put 
it on the market, the manager of the company, who- 
ever he was, would have made a great outcry against 
such a wrong, not merely a wrong but a robbery, and 
although there was no copyright at that day, (Drake 
was in error in using the word copyright), he had his 
remedy at common law. Where he had not sold the 
play, but retained it in his own hands — had the 
manager been also the author, and that author Wil- 
liam Shaksper, of the Curtain or the Globe — he 

*"The play-house authorities deprecated the publishing of 
plays in the belief that the dissemination in print was injurious 
to the receipts of the theater. ' ' Lee. 



WIIvLIAM SHAKSPEIR ON EJNTE^RING LONDON. 77 

certainly would have protected himself against the 
publishers. 

This man was very sensitive in his pocket-nerve. 
After he had become rich, if a neighbor owed him two 
and sixpence, he would hale him before a justice, 
and for a little larger sum, would show him the inside 
of the goal. 

Had William Shaksper been, the writer or owner of 
one of these plays, it would never have been printed 
while he was connected with a theater. The commen- 
tators tell us that in several cases the published 
Quartos are the best authorities. GoUancz says that 
the second Quarto of Romeo and Juliet ' ' is our best 
authority for the play", though, as he tells us, the 
text of the First Folio was taken from the third 
Quarto (1609). Knight says of the same play: 
' 'There can be no doubt whatever that the corrections, 
augmentations and emendations of the second edition 
(second Quarto) of Romeo and Juliet (1599) were 
those of the author. We know of nothing in literary 
history more curious or more instructive than the ex- 
ample of minute attention as well as consummate 
skill, exhibited by Shakespeare in correcting, aug- 
menting and amending the first copy of this play".* 
If then, William Shaksper was the author of the play 
in question, he was himself supplying the booksellers 
with a carefully revised and amended copy of the play 

*Mr. Ivce says, 90: " Except in the case of his two narrative 
poems, Shakespeare" (meaning Shaksper), "made no effort to 
pubHsh any of his works, and uncomplainedly submitted to the 
wholesale piracy of his plays. . . . Such practices were en- 
couraged by his passive indifference, ' ' 



78 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKBSPi^AR:^. 

instead of preserving it for the theater, a proceeding 
adverse to his own interest, or that of the Curtain or 
Globe — supposing that the play was written for the 
Curtain or Globe, or was ever performed at either of 
those theaters. 

In the same way, the second Quarto of Hamlet 
(i6©4) is stated by Fleay to be superior to the Folio 
version, and to be ' 'in the best shape fitted for private 
reading", whilst the Folio version is inferior, 
"shortened for stage representation". Plainly, Wm. 
Shaksper, as manager of the theater, could not have 
consented to such publication, yet if he was the au- 
thor, no one but himself furnished the printers with 
the manuscript of his play in the best shape fitted for 
for private reading. Heminge and Condell, in the 
preface to the First Folio, are made to say that the plays 
given in that volume are as the author conceived them, 
and they stigmatize the Quartos as stolen and surrep- 
titious, published by impostors. Evidently, the writer 
of that preface held that Wm. Shaksper did not coun- 
tenance them, and had no interest in them. 

The Venus and Adonis is prefaced with a quotation 
of two lines from Ovid. Dr. Baynes, Professor in St. 
Andrew's University, p. 107, "Shakespeare Studies", 
says that ' ' these lines are taken from a poem of which 
there existed at the time no English version" , and that 
"the quotation is one from which the circumstances of 
the case could hardly have been chosen by any one who did 
not know the original welV. I agree to that certainly. 
It has been noted by the commentators that to dedicate 
a work at that day to a noble lord without special per- 
mission would have been a great piece of impertinence, 



WILI.IAM SHAKSPKR ON BNTB^RING IvONDON. 79 

and in fact an unheard of thing; hence it has been in- 
ferred that the player Shaksper (assumed to be the 
same with WilHam Shakespeare) must have been on 
friendly terms with Southampton. There is not the 
least evidence that one ever spoke to the other. Chet- 
tle's line "that divers of worship have taken him up", 
refers to Marlowe, not Shaksper, as the-Shaksperians 
have been fond of claiming in evidence of the Strat- 
ford man's familiarity with Southampton, Essex and 
others of the nobility. Fleay, no. 

"In the sixteenth century, in England, a great and 
impassable gulf lay between the quality, the gentry, 
the hereditary upper class, and the common herd who 
toiled for a living." Donnelly, 55. Of the common 
herd, a player belonged to the bottom stratum, de- 
spised, the impersonation of everything that was vile. 
Hence, it is not a matter of wonder that there is no 
evidence that any man "of worship" ever had any 
acquaintance, to say nothing of intimacy, with player 
Shaksper, notwithstanding current impressions to the 
contrary. 

Malone, in his Inquiry, 1796, addressed to Lord 
Charlemont, apropos of Ireland's forged familiar cor- 
respondence with Southampton (letters from Wm. 
Shakspere to the Lord, and vice versay^, says, p. 181 : 
"I will not take up your Lordship's time on this in- 

* "An Inquiry into the Authenticity of certain Miscellaneous 
Papers and I,egal Instruments published December 24, 1795, and 
attributed to Shakspere, Queen Elizabeth, and Henry, Earle of 
Southampton ; by Edmund Malone, Esq., London, 1796". 
This book is an exposure of the Ireland forgeries, and served 
the purpose thoroughly. 



8o SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPEARi;. 

auspicious commencement, which every one, at all 
acquainted with the manner of that day, knows was 
not the language of a nobleman to a person at the im- 
measurable distance at which Shakspeare stood from 
lyord Southampton. Had he condescended to write to 
our poet, he would without doubt have begun with 
Mr. Shakspeare, or Good Master Shakspeare or Good 
William, or some other similar form." The fact that 
the poems were dedicated to Southampton indicates no 
personal acquaintance with that nobleman on the part 
of the poet, but the enterprise and impudence of the 
publishers rather. 

It must not be forgotten that players were vagabonds 
by law. ' 'As play acting was not recognized as a craft, 
they (the players) became in the eye of the law rogues 
and vagabonds, men with no obvious means of liveli- 
hood, and as such, liable to be taken up and punished 
by whipping, fine or imprisonment. Finding them- 
selves in this predicament, they applied to the Earl of 
Leicester, who obtained for them a protecting license 
from the Queen, contingent upon their good behavior, 
and liable to be taken away at any time.* 

"Thus the Queen's players became licensed Vaga- 
bonds as the Queen's Bedesmen were Licensed Beg- 

* An act of 1572 (14 EHz.) enacted that "all fencers, bear- 
wards, common players of interludes and minstrels (not be- 
longing to any baron of this realm, or to any honorable other 
person of greater degree) wandering abroad without the license 
of two justices, at the least were subject to be grievously 
whipped and burned through the gristle of the right ear with a 
hot iron of the compass of an inch about." Enc. Brit., 9th Ed. 



WILLIAM SHAKSPKR ON SNT^RING LONDON. 8 1 

gars. It was in this class William Shaksper be- 
longed". Smith, 59. "The license was not so much 
a mark of approbation, but of toleration ; it was not 
feo much to secure them certain privileges, as to con- 
fine them within due limits, and render them promptly 
amenable to the- law. Thus the last clause in the 
order of the Privy Council openly states "that for 
breaking any of these orders, their toleration cease". 
Id., 68. "Wm. Shakspere connected himself with a 
class that was held in the utmost contempt' ' , and ' 'the 
theater with which he was connected was the Public 
Theater — the lowest place at which dramatic entertain- 
ments were then represented." Id., 145. 

Dr. Ingleby says of the plaj^ers of that day : "Let 
their lives be as cleanly and their dealings as upright 
as they might, they were deemed to be sayis aveu, run- 
aways and vagabonds. ' ' * 



* More or less of this prejudice prevailed two hundred years 
later. In Mrs. Thrale's Memoirs, we read : "On the announce- 
ment of her marriage (with Piozzi, an Italian gentleman, but a 
professional musician) . . . people of our day can hardly form 
a notion of the storm of obloquy that broke upon her. To ap- 
preciate the tone taken by her friends, we must bear in mind 
the social position of Italian singers and musical performers at 
the period. 'Amusing vagabonds' are the epithets by which 
Lord Byron designated Catalini and Naldi in 1809, and such is 
the light in which they were undoubtedly regarded in 1784. 
. . . Lord Macaulay says that she fled from the laughter 
and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen to a land 
where she was unknown." . . . Further: "Johnson was 
writing to Hawkins that the woman he had once called his 
mistress had become a subject for her enemies to exult over, 
and for friends, if she had any left, to forget or pity". 

Boswell records this story in 1777 : — "We walked over to 



82 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE;. 

This opprobrium, it seems, attaclied. also to the writers 
of plays: "Of the contempt entertained for the actor's 
profession, some fell to the share of the dramatist; 
'even I^odge', says Dr. Ingleby, 'who had indeed never 
trod the stage, but had written several plays, and had 
no reason to be ashamed of his antecedents, speaks of 
the vocation of the play-maker as sharing the odium 
attached to the actor' ". Bnc. Brit., Drama. 

Fleay, Hist., 206, says: "The statute of 39 Kliz. 
(1587) had expressly included 'common players' among 
the persons whom noblemen might license (z. e. to 
stroll , travel ) , and so had the statute of 14 Kliz. (1572)." 
But the statute of i James (1604) changed this. It 
"enacts that noble personages shall authorize none to 
go abroad {i. e, to stroll). From 1604 onward any 
such strollers were ranked as vagabonds and sturdy 
beggars, along with gipsies, minstrels, and pedlars." 

Froude, Hist. Kng., ch. i, says: "It was the ex- 
pressed conviction" (through the vagrant Acts of 
Henry and Elizabeth) "of the English nation, that it 
was better for a man not to live at all than to live a 
profitless and worthless life. The vagabond was a sore 

Richardson's, and I wondered to find him displeased that I did 
not 'treat Cibber with more respect. ' ' ' 

Johnson : — "Now, sir, to talk of respect for a player." (Smil- 
ing disdainfully. ) 

Boswell : — "There, sir, you are always heretical; you never 
will allow merit to a player' ' . 

Johnson : — "Merit, sir, what merit ? Do j^ou respect a rope- 
dancer or a ballad-singer ? . , What, sir, a fellow who claps 
a hump on his back, and a lump on his leg, and cries 'I am 
Richard the Third'? Nay, sir, a ballad-singer is a higher man," 
etc., etc. 



WILWAM SHAKSPSR ON EjNTKRING IvONDON. 83 

Spot upon the commonwealth, to be healed by a whole- 
some discipline if the gangrene was not incurable; to 
be cut away with the knife if the milder treatment of 
the cart whip failed to be of profit. ' ' 

' 'The Venus and Adonis is the most carefully pol- 
ished production that WilUiam Shakespeare's name 
was ever signed to; and moreover, as polished, ele- 
gant and sumptuous a piece of rhetoric as English let- 
ters have ever produced". Morgan, 41. 

It is a strange thing, and the more so, inasmuch as 
the young Shaksper could have known no other lan- 
guage than the Warwickshire patois when he went to 
I,ondon, that in the Venus and Adonis there is not 
one word exclusively of Warwickshire. ' 'The people 
of Warwickshire spoke a patois as different from the 
English of the London Court, as the Lowland Scotch 
of Burns is to-day different from the English of West- 
minster". Donnelly, 43. If any dialect words at 
all were used in the Venus and Adonis, they are com- 
mon to many counties, or are classical English. "It 
further appears that there are in this entire poem 
of 1 194 verses, scarcely a score of words, to compre- 
hend which, even to the most ordinary English scholar 
of to-day, would need a lexicon. But on examining 
these words, it will be found that they are early En- 
glish, mostly classical, never in any sense local or 
sectional. ' ' Morgan' s Venus and Adonis, A study in 
the Warwickshire dialect", 152: "Could Venus and 
Adonis have been written by one Warwickshire born 
and bred, in the reign of Elizabeth who had not been 
first qualified by drill in the courtly English in which 
we find that poem written? A man of education and 



84 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKESPEARE;. 

culture, practised in KngHsli composition, may forge 
the style of a letterless rustic. Thackeray has done 
this, and I^owell, and Dickens, and hundreds of others. 
But could a letterless clown forge the style of a gen- 
tleman of culture? Tennyson could write the 'North- 
ern Farmer' in I^incolnshire dialect. But could a 
lyincolnshire farmer, who knew nothing of any ver- 
nacular except the lyincolnshire, have written the 
Princess or In Memoriam?" Id. 139. A good deal 
has been said in Shakespeare Society gatherings, or in 
lectures on Shakespeare, about the use of the War- 
wickshire dialect in the plays, the inference being that 
no one but a Warwickshire man could have written 
them. I have quoted Dr. Morgan's valuable book on 
the Warwickshire dialect in Venus and Adonis to 
the effect that there is not in the entire poem one 
word exclusively Warwickshire. As to the plays, 
Dr. Morgan, 10, says: "The Shakespeare plays con- 
tain not only Warwickshire, but specimens of about 
every other known English dialect. . . . The 
condition in life implied by a man's employment of 
one patois would seem to dispose of the probability of 
his possessing either the faculties or the inclination of 
acquiring a dozen others. The philologist or archae- 
ologist may employ or amuse himself in collecting 
specimens of dialect and provincialisms. ... In 
the plays, where the Shakespearean character happens 
to be a Warwickshirean, he will be found to speak 
that dialect, and not otherwise. ... In these 
plays, however a Roman or a Bohemian may use an 
English idiom, there is no confusion in the dialects 
when used as dialects, and not as vernacular. The 



WII.I<IAM SHAKSPEJR ON KNTE^RING LONDON. 85 

Norfolk man does not talk Welsh, nor the Welshman 
lyeicestershire; nor does the Warwickshire man use 
Welsh-Bnglish. " 

One of Dr. Morgan's conclusions (149) is this: "That 
the Shakespeare Works are a storehouse of Eliza- 
bethan English in all of its many varieties and varia- 
tions, its dictions, vernaculars and dialects, from the 
most refined, splendid and courtly to the rudest and 
crudest". And another conclusion is: "That the poem 
Venus and Adonis is apparently the monograph of a 
poet able to confine himself to the most refined, most 
splendid, and courtliest of these dialects — and to resist 
any temptation of vicinage, heredity, or contemporary 
corruptions". The question naturally arises, were not 
these works therefore beyond the possibility of Will- 
iam Shaksper ? 

The celebrated picture of the horse in Venus and 
Adonis is "borrowed word for word from Du Bartas. 
Here are all Shakespeare's phrases as they occur in 
that description, and in brackets those of his original: 
Round-hoofed [round-hoof] ; short -jointed [short-pas- 
terns] ; broad breast [broad breast] ; full eye [full 
eye] ; small head [head but of middle size] ; nostrils 
wide [nostrils wide] ; high crest [crested neck, bowed] ; 
straight legs [hart-like legs] ; and passing strong 
[strong] ; thin mane [thin mane] ; thick tail [full 
tail] ; broad buttock [fair fat buttocks] ; tender hide 
[smooth hide]." Quarterly Review (lyondon), No. 
356, April, 1-894, P- 348. Now Du Bartas was a 
French poet, and his work (on Creation, embracing 
said description) was first translated into English in 
1598, after the publication of the Venus and Adonis. 



86 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPEARK. 

Was it likely that Du Bartas, in the original, was to 
be found in Stratford, that "bookless neighborhood", 
or that William Shaksper should have been able to 
read it if it were ? 

Of this remarkable poem, Venus and Adonis, Pro- 
fessor Baynes said in Fraser's Magazine, 1879-80: 
"On becoming firmly established in his new career as 
playwright and dramatic proprietor, he (Shaksper) 
recalled and prepared for the press his early poetical 
studies, Venus and Adonis, and Lucrece. They are 
wonderful poems to have been produced by an English 
youth — written in the country between the years 1580 
and 1586-7" (that is, between the ages of 16 and 22 or 
23 years, during which time the boy and young man 
was leading the practical life of a butcher). "The 
marvel is, that they should have been produced by a 
'prentice hand' in a small provincial town. ... It 
(the Venus and Adonis) was founded upon no model, 
either ancient or modern; nothing like it had ever 
been attempted before, and nothing compared to it was 
produced afterwards." He quotes Mr. Collier as say- 
ing: "We feel morally certain Venus and Adonis was 
in being prior to Shakspere's quitting Stratford. . . . 
We know that Shakspere was a diligent student of 
Ovid's methods of dealing with mythological fable. 
. . , The full, sensuous, pictorial treatment of his 
theme in Venus and Adonis and the Lucrece is thor- 
oughly Ovidian." And Mr. Baynes gives several 
pages to quotations from these poems to show how 
close to Ovid they are. Of course, the nearer they 
are to Ovid, the more certain it is that young Shak- 
sper had nothing to do with them. 



WII.I.IAM SHAKSPE;R on i^NTKRING I^ONDON. 87 

On the Other hand, Halliwell-Phillipps says: "It is 
extremely improbable that an epic so highly finished, 
and so completely devoid of patois, could have been 
produced under the circumstances of his then domestic 
surroundings, while, moreover, the notion is opposed 
to the best and earliest traditional opinions." I. 104. 

No direct testimony has come to us from William 
Shaksper's contemporaries about his theatrical career. 
There are vague traditions, but no reliable or contem- 
porary evidence. In a very few instances he is alluded 
to as a player, but as to his playing no one said any- 
thing. Now and then the bare mention of his name 
as connected with a company or a theater occurs, but 
no further information is given. There are extant 
proofs that he was a shareholder in the Globe, and 
that he retired to Stratford about 16 10, a rich man. 
As to writing plays, as I shall in due time show, no 
one during his life, (to 16 16) or after his death, to the 
publication of the First Folio of the collected plays of 
William Shakespeare, 1623, testified in any sort of lit- 
erature that this man wrote plays of any kind. The 
whole course of his life, so far as it is known, was in- 
consistent with writing of plays. The myth that 
William Shaksper was the man who wrote the plays 
called "Shakespeare"s, had its genesis in 1623, seven 
years after Shaksper's death, by what may be termed 
an accident, and grew with exceeding slowness — so 
much so, indeed, that by the time it had fairly become 
able to stand alone, it was too late to get at any facts 
ot the reputed author's life, or anything whatever con- 
nected with the plays. All that could be learned then 
was from the remembrances of some old persons of 



88 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPEARi;. 

Stratford, who had known the player before he went 
to lyondon, or after he came back, or from traditions 
which reached the next generations. Not a soul 
would appear to have been then alive in I^ondon who 
could give any personal testimony as to his life there, 
or as to his authorship of the plays, or to the quality 
of his playing. The first notes by any inquirer into 
the facts relating to Shaksper were made in 1662 by 
Ward, the next by Aubrey, at about 1680. Nothing 
in the memoranda of either of these is of the slightest 
bearing on the authorship of the Shakespeare plays. 
The next inquirer was Dowdall, in 1693, who talked 
with the old sexton, and soon after. Da vies added a 
few biographical notes relating to Shaksper in a manu- 
script biographical dictionary he owned. H.-P.. I, p. 
1 1 . That is all that was picked up and made of rec- 
ord during the rest of the seventeenth century after 
Shaksper's death, and what there is, not merely gives 
no help towards the mystery of the authorship of the 
plays, but is entirely of a character to forbid the sup- 
position that the Stratford man ever had anything to 
do with the plays. 

Next came Nicholas Rowe (1709, ninety-three years 
after the player died), who "was the first editor 
of Shakespeare entitled to the name, and the first to at- 
tempt the collection of a few biographical particulars 
of the immortal dramatist. ' ' (That is to say of the 
Stratford man, William Shaksper.) Chambers' Knc. 
Rowe has only narrated certain gossip on the authority 
of Betterton — player from 1661 to 1709 — and D'Ave- 
nant, manager of one of the theaters before, and again 
after, the civil war. From these two men Rowe could 



wiivWAM shakspe;r on knte;ring i^ondon. 89 

pick up. nothing of William Shaksper's lyondon 
career, but this: "He was received into the company- 
then in being at first in a very mean rank, but his ad- 
mirable wit, and the natural turn of it to the stage 
soon distinguished him, if not as an extraordinary 
actor, yet as an excellent writer. . . . Though I 
have inquired I never could meet with any further ac- 
count of him this way than that the top of his per- 
formance was the Ghost of his own Hamlet, ' ' 

Betterton made a special journey into Warwick- 
shire "to gather up what remains he could", and all 
he got was that the "latter part of Shaksper's life was 
spent in the retirement and conversation of his friends; 
that he had the good fortune to gather an estate equal 
to his wish, and spent some years in his native Strat- 
ford"; and "his wit and good nature entitled him to 
the friendship of the gentlemen of the neighborhood' ' , 
one of whom was "Mr. Combe, noted for his wealth 
and usury". On this Combe, Rowe says that Shak- 
sper made an' impromptu epitaph: "Ten-in-the-hun- 
dred lies here ingraved", etc., the doggerel we have 
all heard of, and he adds, "the sharpness of the satyr 
is said to have stung the man so severely that he never 
forgave it. He (Shaksper) dy'd and was bury'd, and 
left three daughters. . . . This is what I could 
learn of any note relating to himself or family".* 



* R. G. White, Memoirs, says "that Betterton visited Shak- 
sper's native place probably between 1670 and 1675 for the ex- 
press purpose of gathering materials for his biography. All 
that he learned was probably embodied by Rowe in the ac- 
connt of the poet's life which appeared in Rowe's edition, pub- 
lished in 1709." 



go shakspb;r not shake;speare;. 

Plainly, there was nothing to be gathered either in 
I^ondon or in Stratford of the least moment. The 
man was forgotten in lyondon before his bones had 
moldered, and in Stratford was remembered only as a 
rich man, who had come from L^ondon and resided 
there the last years of his life. 

That is all that was discovered of William Shak- 
sper or related of him till Edmund Malone at the close 
of the eighteenth century began to investigate. Mor- 
gan, 177, says: "With the most painstaking care he 
sifted every morsel of testimony, searching in his- 
tories, chronicles, itineraries, local traditions, and re- 
ports — but in vain. The nearer he came to the Strat- 
ford man, the further he got from a poet and 
student". Malone says: "That almost a century 
should have elapsed from the time of Shakespeare's 
(Shaksper's) death, without a single attempt to dis- 
cover any circumstance which should throw a light on 
the history of his life or literary career . . . are 
circumstances which cannot be contemplated without 
astonishment. . . . Sir William Dugdale, bom in 
1605, and educated at the school of Coventry, 20 
miles from Stratford-on-Avon, and whose work 'The 
Antiquities of Warwickshire', appeared in 1646, only 
thirty 3^ears after the death of our poet, we might 
have expected to give some curious memorials of his 
illustrious countryman. But he has not given us a 
single particular of his private life. The next bio- 
graphical printed notice that I have found is in Ful- 
ler's 'Worthies', folio, 1662; in 'Warwickshire', p. 
116, where there is a short account of our poet, fur- 
nishing very little information concerning him. And 



wiivLiAM SHAKSPKR ON e;nt:sring i^ondon. 91 

again, neither Winstanley in his 'I^ives of the Poets', 
1687; Langbaine, in 1691; Blount, in 1694; Gibbon, 
in 1699, add anything to the meagre accounts of Dug- 
dale and Fuller. That Anthony Wood, who was him- 
self a native of Oxford (in the same county), and who 
was born about fourteen years after the death of 
Shakspere, should not have collected any anecdotes of 
Shakspere has always appeared to be extraordinary. 
Though vShakspere had no direct title to a place in the 
.'Athenae Oxonienses,' that diligent antiquary could 
easily have found a niche for his life as he had done 
for many others not bred at Oxford. The life of 
Davenant afforded him a very full opportunity for such 
an insertion." 

"Mr. Malone, in spite of the silence of the authori- 
ties to whose page he had recourse, not only assumed 
all he could not find authority for, but undertook to 
tell us the precise date at which his Stratford lad com- 
posed his plays. . . . From the time of Malone, 
the Shakespeare making, Shakespeare mending and 
cobbling, have gone on without relaxation. From 
Malone downward, the Shakspereans have rejected 
every shred of fact they found at hand, and weaved, 
instead, their warp and woof of fiction around a vision 
of their own." Morgan, 85, et seq. 

And now, nearly three hundred years after William 
Shaksper died, commentators have arisen who under- 
take to decide out of their own consciousness what he 
did or did not do, what he did or did not write, and 
they give minute details of his school life, of his career 
in lyondon, how he gained the knowledge that enabled 
him to write the Shakespeare poems and plays, and 



92 shaksp:sr not shakkspKars. 

the circumstances under which each play was com- 
posed, and the sequence in which they were written. 
Mr. Halliwell-PhilHpps is sufficiently inclined to give 
facts which are no facts, in his 'Outlines', but he can- 
not stand the presumption of the recent biographers, 
and relieves his soul as follows: "But in like manner 
as there have arisen in these days critics who, "dispens- 
ing altogether with the old contemporary evidences" — 
(that hits Baynes and Fleay and Lee) — "can enter so 
perfectly into all the vicissitudes of Shakespeare's in- 
tellectual temperament, that they can authoritatively 
identify at a glance every line that he did write, and 
with equal precision every sentence that he did not 
write" — (that whacks the critics who give out silly 
twaddle about stop't lines, metrical tests, light end- 
ings and weak endings) — "even so there are others to 
whom a picture's history is not of the slightest mo- 
ment, their reflective instincts enabling them without ef- 
fort or investigation to recognize in an old curiosity 
shop the dramatist's visage" — (the Becker death 
mask) — "that once belonged to the author of Hamlet." 
I, 297. And the old gentleman sorrowfully adds: 
"lyowlier votaries can only bow their heads in si- 
lence. ' ' 

No one during William Shaksper's life, or after his 
death, 161 6, up to 1623, is known to have declared or 
written in book, note-book, or letter, that he was the 
author of the Shakespeare plays, or even of a single 
play of that series; and there is not the least evidence 
that any cultivated man of that day ever thought that 
he was the author. Yet, on so slight a foundation, as 
a distant resemblance in the sound of the two names, 



WIIvl^lAM SHAKSPElR ON I^NTE^RING IvONDON. 93 

Shaksper and Shakes-speare, by aid of surmises, as- 
sumptions, lies and forgeries, and what Fleay calls 
"mischievously fertile imaginations", a vast super- 
structure has been reared, and all the world is to-day 
admiring it. All the world is crediting a buffoon, a 
degraded strolling player, the disciple and associate of 
Kemp, whose portrait Dr. Rolfe has favored us with, 
with the authorship of the greatest works of imagina- 
tion, learning and philosophy which the English lan- 
guage can show. 

The Sultan looked over the way one morning to 
discover only an open place where a wonderful palace 
had delighted him the day before and for many days, 
and the Chronicle says that he rubbed his eyes, but 
still could see nothing; he stood some time endeav- 
oring to comprehend how so large a palace should so 
suddenly and so completely vanish. Some day, and 
not long hence, the Shaksper piece of architecture 
will dissolve as did that ancient palace, and a good 
many critics and commentators will rub their eyes in 
vain, and wonder whether they have not been in a 
dream. 



94 SHAKSPB^R NOT shak.:ssp:^ar:^. 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE THEATERS IN IvONDON. 

lyCt us look at the theater of 1 580-1610, during the 
period while William Shaksper was in one way or an- 
other connected with it, and see what sort of a place it 
was, what the plaj^ers were, the character and style of 
the playing, and what sort of audiences frequented it. 

Taine, English I^iterature, ch. 2, says: "The thea- 
ters were great and rude contrivances, awkward in 
their construction, barbarous in their appointments, 
open to the sky as to the pit, admittance to which was 
one penny. If it rained, and it often rains in lyondon, 
the people in the pit, butchers, mercers, bakers, sailors, 
apprentices, received the streaming rain on their heads. 
. , While waiting for the piece, they amuse 
themselves after their fashion, drink beer, crack nuts, 
eat fruit, howl, and now and then resort to their fists ; 
they have been known to fall upon the actors, and 
turn the theater upside down. . . . When the 
beer took effect, there was a great upturned barrel 
in the pit, a peculiar receptacle for general use. The 
smell rises and then comes the cry 'Burn the juniper' ! 
They bum some in a plate on the stage, and the 
heavy smoke fills the air. . . . Above them on 
the stage were the spectators able to pay a shilling, 
and gentlefolk. If they chose to pay an extra shilling, 
they could have a stool ; if there were not stools 
enough, then they lie down on the ground. They 



^HB) I'HE^ATKRS IN tONDON, ^5 

play cards, smoke, insult the pit, who give it back 
without stinting, and throw apples at them into the 
bargain. . . There were no preparations or per- 
spectives, few or no movable scenes. A scroll, in big 
letters announces to the public that they were in Rome 
or Constantinople," etc., etc. The burden of eiitertain- 
ing the audience rested with the clow7t, and the female 
characters were personated by boys and men. 

Sir Philip Sidney, describing the state of the drama, 
and the stage in his time, about 1583, says: "Now 
you shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and 
then you must believe the stage to be a garden. By 
and by, we have news of the shipwreck in the same 
place; then we are to blame if we accept it not for a 
rock. Upon the back of that comes out a hideous 
monster with fire and smoke, and the miserable be- 
holders are bound to take it for a cave ; while in the 
meantime two armies fly in, represented b)^ four swords 
and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not re- 
ceive it for a pitched field. ' ' 

"In these primitive theaters no scenery was used ; 
that was first introduced by Davenant after the Res- 
toration. A curtain met the spectators on entering; 
it was then slowly drawn up; and he saw a large stage 
strewn with rushes, the side walls hung with arras; 
a large board with a name printed on it, Westminster, 
Messina, etc., informed him where the scenes of the 
pla}'- to be performed was laid." Enc. Brit., 9th Kd., 
Vol. VIII, 420. 

Mr. Phillipps says, I, 372: "The charge for admis- 
sion to the 'Theater' was a penny; but this sum merely 
entitled the visitor to standing room in the lower part 



96 SHAKSPEJR NOT SHAK:^SPE;ARE;. 

of the house; if he wanted to enter any of the gal- 
leries, another penny was demanded. . . , The 
probability is, that the penny alone was insufl&cient 
for securing places which would be endured by any 
but the lowest and poorest class of auditors, those who 
stood in the yard or pit, and were thus exposed to the 
uncertainties of the weather." Also Vol. I, 184: 
"There was no movable or other kind of scenery." 
On page 183, he describes the Globe theater, built in 
1600, thus: "The building was constructed of wood, 
and was partially roofed with thatch, but the larger 
part of the interior was open to the sky. In the ab- 
sence of a roof, the pit and much of the other part of 
the building obliquely exposed to the rays of the sun, 
both visitors and actors must on occasions have found 
the Globe, even in the summer time, exceedingly un- 
comfortable. The extent of the inconvenience that 
was endured there in the month of February, and in 
muggy Southwark, almost defies conjecture. . . . 
It is scarcely necessary to observe that the current of 
air engendered by the open roof would have rendered a 
perfonnajice by candle-light an impossibility. There 
was a building so diminutive that the remotest specta- 
tor could hardly have been more than a dozen yards or 
thereabouts from the front of the stage," etc. 

Allowing the pit to have been twelve yards square 
in area, and four persons to the yard, there would be 
a total of 576 spectators in the pit. When Mr. 
Phillipps tells us, I, 98, that ten thousand spectators 
witnessed the performance of Henry VI, he means 
that on successive days of performance the number of 
spectators was considerable. On page 177, the same 



the; THi^ATeRS IN LONDON. 97 

author speaks of the ' 'diminutive boards of the Cur- 
tain theater. ' ' 

Dowden, 47, says: "In all that is external and 
mechanical, the theater was still comparatively rude. 
During Shakspere's connection with the stage, the 
buildings used for dramatic entertainment were of two 
classes — public theaters and those which were called 
private. The public theaters" (the sort with which 
William Shaksper was connected throughout his 
career in London), "except over the stage and boxes, 
were open to the sky. In private theaters, the per- 
formances commonly took place by the light of candles 
or cressets; in public theaters, by daylight. In both, 
the play began in the afternoon, often at 3 o'clock and 
ended at 5, or between 5 and 6. The spectators who 
occupied the 'pit or yard' were obliged in public 
theaters to stand; in private theaters they were seated. 
The price of admittance to various houses varied from, 
one penny, or two pence, to two shillings or half a 
crown. In public theaters, young men of rank and 
fashion were accommodated with stools on each side of 
the rush-strewn stage, where their attendants waited 
upon them and supplied them with their pipes and 
tobacco. I^adies visiting the theaters sometimes wore 
masks. Movable scenery had not then been de- 
vised. ... In front of the stage ran curtains, 
which could be drawn and withdrawn as was needed, 
and at the back of the stage, similar curtains occupied 
the place of our scenery, and could be used for exits 
and entrances of the actors. Toward the rear of the 
stage rose an upper stage, from which, when it seemed 
suitable, part of the dialogue could be spoken. . . . 



98 SHAKSPER NO^T SHAKESPEJARK. 

This Upper stage might be imagined the walls of a 
besieged city, as in King John; or a balcony, as in 
Romeo and Juliet; or as a stage within a stage, as in 
the first scene of Hamlet." 

Fleay, 251, says: "The prologue of the play of 
Henry VIII shows that the extant play was performed 
as a new one at Blackfriars, for the price of entrance, 
one shilling, (line 12), and the address to 'the first 
and happiest hearers of the town', (line 24) are only 
applicable to the private house in Blackfriars;* the 
entrance to the Globe was two-pence, and the audience 
at this public house was of a much lower class." 

Collier says, vol. I, 17: "With regard to mechanical 
facilities for the representation of plays before, and 
indeed long after the time of Shakespeare, it may be 
sufficient to state that our theaters were merely round 
wooden buildings, open to the sky in the audience 
part of the house, although the stage was covered by 

* It is not to be supposed that the private theaters were 
numerous. In fact they consisted of just two: 

1. "The Singing School of St. Pauls, opened early in 1600 or 
1599. The Paul's boys ceased to act in 1607; but I think that 
the children of the King's Revels, who succeeded them, were 
the same company, under another name. . . . They acted 
from 1607 to 1609. Fleay, Hist. lyond. Stage, 163. 

2. Blackfriars. "The freehold of the house which was trans- 
formed into this theater was purchased by James Burbage of Sir 
W. Moore, 4th May, 1596. . . . There is no trace of any 
performance there until Nov. 1598, when one of Jonson's plays 
was acted by ' the children of the Blackfriars' . It was leased 
in 1600 to one Bvans, who first set up the Chapel Boys. In 
August, 1608, the Burbages and associates bought the remaining 
lease of Bvans, the master of the Chapel, and near the end of 
1609, placed men players in their room." Id., I, c. 



THE THKATE^RS IN I^ONDON. 99 

a hanging roof; the spectators stood on the ground in 
front, or at the sides, or were accommodated in boxes, 
or around the inner circumference of the edifice, or in 
galleries at a greater elevation. Our ancient stage was 
unfurnished with movable scenery; and tables, chairs, 
a few boards for a battlemented wall, or a rude struc- 
ture for a tomb or an altar, seemed to have been 
nearly all the properties it possessed." "At this 
period of our stage history (i594). the performances 
usually began at three in the afternoon". Collier 
further says, I, ii: "The Globe was a round wooden 
building open to the sky, while the stage was pro- 
tected from the weather by an overhanging roof or 
thatch. The number of persons it would contain, we 
have no means of ascertaining, but it certainly was of 
larger dimensions than the Rose theater, the Hope, or 
the Swan, three other edifices of the same kind, and 
used for the same purpose in the immediate vicinity. 
The Blackfriars was a private theater, as it was called, 
entirely covered in, and of smaller size." Fleay, 
Hist., says, p. 152: "Blackfriars was a private theater, 
built after 1596. The private theaters were in en- 
closed buildings, had pits with seats instead of open 
yards. The performances were by candle light and 
part of the audience sat on the stage smoking. They 
(these private theaters) grew out of the performances of 
marriages, etc. , of the gentry, and the Inns of Cotirt 
Revels, just as the public theaters grew otct of the inn- 
yard play-houses and the open air scaffolds in the market 
place.'" On page 10, Mr. Fleay goes back to the ori- 
gin of play houses and playing companies: "At the 
accession of Elizabeth (1558), the stages, that is to 



lOO SHAKSPE;R not SHAKKSPEjARli. 

say, the inn-yards, occupied as play places, were used 
by the men players under the patronage of the princi- 
ple noblemen and gentry connected with the Court. 
. Had it not been for the Queen's liking of the 
drama, and for the courtiers imitating of her taste 
shown by the adoption of dramatic entertainments at 
christenings, marriages, etc. , it would have been long 
before the stage would have emerged from its earlier 
condition as a mere vehicle for the production of mys- 
teries, miracles, and moral interludes. . . . The 
point which I endeavor to insist on as a necessary 
condition to the understanding of all subsequent stage 
history, is the absolute subordination of public per- 
formances to court representations." He says that 
the keeping up the play houses in inn-yards was in 
eifect allowing of rehearsals to be performed to and at 
the cost of the people, so saving court expenses; and 
that out of the plays exhibited in public every year, 
some half dozen of the best were selected for repre- 
sentation before the Queen at Christmas and Shrove- 
tide. These play-places were suppressed by the city 
authorities, and this led to the establishment of player 
companies directly under the Queen's patronage. 
^''Scarcely any advance was made in the literary quality 
of these plays or interludes between 1360 and i^Sy. 
Ditmb-shows and Inductions^ (an introductory scene, 
preface, prologue to a play. Webster) became popular 
toward the close of the period'' ; that is, about the time 

* The play of the ' 'Taming of a Shrew' ' is prefaced by an 
"Induction", consisting of two short farcical scenes; the foolery 
with a drunken tinker was just the sort of thing to please a 
public theater audience. 



th:^ the;ate;rs in london. ioi 

that young Sliaksper came to lyondon. In 1576 or 
1577, the first two theaters, (the Theater, and the 
Curtain) were built. Mr. Fleay gives a list of the 
Interludes and plays that were represented at Court up 
to 1587, and they are all of the simplest description. 
He says, "Up to 1592, the court performances, (from 
1586) had been Interludes, plays by the Paul's boys, 
and Masks. ' ' An example of the last was ' ' The 
Misfortunes of Arthur," by the gentlemen of Gray's 
Inn. 

Collier makes Shaksper a player at the Blackfriars, 
and a part owner of that theater; but Fleaj^, in his 
lyife, 55, says: "There is no proof that William Shak- 
spere ever acted at Blackfriars" — which is equivalent 
to saying that he never acted in a private theater. In 
the same book, he says also, (65) that the averment 
that Shakspere was part owner of the Blackfriars 
rests on forged documents (64), that the King's men 
took possession of this theater for their own purposes 
in 1 6 14, or 1615, "but there is not a trace of them 
until then in connection with this private theater, 
except the ex parte statement of C. Burbage, made 
for a special purpose, in a plea which is studiously 
ambiguous. ' ' 

In the Hist. Lond. Stage, Mr. Fleay has somewhat 
modified this last statement. On page 153, he says: 
"In August, 1608, the Burbages bought the then re- 
maining lease of Blackfriars, and near the end of 1609, 
(on p. 201, Dec. 1609), placed men players, Heminge, 
Condell, Shakspere, &c., in their rooms." Again, 
on p. 190, he says: "They (the King's men) con- 
tinued 'from 1 6 10 to 1642 to use both the Globe 



I02 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPKARB). 

and the Blackfriars. The year 1610 was just at the 
end of Shaksper's theatrical career, for he sold his in- 
terest and retired to Stratford at that time, 16 10- 11." 
There is no testimony in PhilHpps or Fleay that Shak- 
sper ever played at Blackfriars, or any private theater. 
His Company played occasionally at Court, about 
Christmas time, at Whitehall, and at Greenwich; also 
rarely at Somerset House, at Pembroke House, at 
Grays Inn, being officially the I<ord Chamberlain's 
players, or the King's players; but at these perform- 
ances as elsewhere, there was no movable scenery used 
and the plays were greatly abbreviated. Mr. Fleay 
repeatedly alludes to this fact. 

The covering being of thatch led to the destruction 
of the Globe theater,in 1613. In playing All is True, 
"certain chambers being shot off, some of the stuff 
wherewith some of them was stopped (wadding) did 
light on the thatch, and kindled inwardly . . . con- 
suming the whole house to the ground' ' . 

Symonds, 287, says: "Performances began at 3 
o'clock in the afternoon and averaged about two 
hours in duration. The piece of the da)^ was gen- 
erally closed with an address to the sovereign, recited 
by the actors on their knees. Then followed a kind of 
farce, technically called a jig, in which the clown per- 
formed the solo. Jigs were written in rhyme, plenti- 
fully interspersed with gag, and extempore action.* 
(Webster defines jig — obsolete — as a light, humorous 
piece of writing — a farce in verse). Entrance prices 

* "Kemp's jigge was one of those diversions, of combined sing- 
ing and dancing, of which several were written and performed 
hy him and Tarleton." Ing. 28, 



the; THE;A'rE;RS IN I^ONDON. 103 

varied with the theater, the seat, and kind of exhibi- 
tion. For the most ordinary shows three pennies were 
paid, one at the gate, another at the entry of the scaf- 
fold, and the third for quiet standing. In the larger 
theaters, there was a place called the two-penny room, 
which answers to our gallery. Private boxes were 
sold at a higher rate. ' ' 

' 'The lowest frequenters of the public theaters con- 
temptuously alluded to as 'groundlings', and 'stink- 
ards', stood in the yard (pit) beneath the open sky. . 

. Spectators of the more fashionable sort sat on 
three-legged stools upon the stage; they took their 
place by force in defiance of the hootings and hisses of 
the groundlings separated from them by the barriers 
of the stage. The custom was a great annoyance both 
to the actors and the audience; for the ^'^oung gallants 
vShowed very little consideration for either. They ex- 
changed remarks, and chaffed the players, peeled 
oranges, and threw apples into the yard, puffed to- 
bacco from pipes lighted by their pages, and flirted 
with the women in the neighboring boxes." 

["Chaffed the players." We have an amusing de- 
scription of this pastime in A .Midsummer- Night's 
Dream, where Theseus, Hippolyta, and the courtiers, 
sitting on the stage witnessing the play given by Bot- 
tom and his company "of unlettered rustics", are in- 
cessantly and unmercifully interrupting and ridiculing 
them. The Queen exclaims: "This is the silliest stuff 
e'er I heard. ' ' In comes the lion, who roars as gently 
as a sucking dove. "Well roared, lion, well run, 
Thisbe". Py ramus dies; "With the help of a surgeon 
lie mi^ht yet recover, and prove an ass ' ' ; and so on, 



I04 shaksp:sr not shakespbare;. 

audibly, at everj^ movement of the players. This prac- 
tice of chaffing shows the contempt of the better class 
of spectators for both players and play, and we are 
told it was habitual, also that the private theaters 
were subjected to the same nuisance. Fleay, from his 
point of view that Shakespeare was Shaksper, and 
the author of Hamlet, considers the attack on Bottom 
and his "base mechanicals" as a satire against the 
Earl of Sussex's men (company) ... all guess 
work; but from my point of view that Shakespeare 
was not Shaksper, and that the Shakespeare plays were 
not written for the public theater, or with any thought 
of their being played therein, it is likely that the 
scene spoken of was written in ridicule of all public 
theater players, and that of Shaksper' s company as 
much as any.] 

Mr. Symonds imagines a visit to the Fortune, 289: 
"It is three o'clock upon an afternoon of summer. 
We pass through the great door, ascend some steps, 
and let ourselves into our private room (box) upon 
the first or lower tier. We find ourselves in a low 
square building, open to the slanting sunlight, built of 
shabby wood, not unlike a circus; smelling of saw- 
dust and the breath of people. The yard before is 
crowded with 'six-penny mechanics' , and ' 'prentices' in 
greasy leathern jerkins, servants, boys and grooms, 
elbowing each other for bare standing room, and pass- 
ing coarse jests on their neighbors. A similar crowd 
is in the two-penny room above our heads, except that 
here are a few flaunting girls. Not many women of 
respectability are visible, although two or three have 
taken a side box, from which they can lean forward to 



the; THeATDRS IN I^ONDON. 105 

exchange remarks with the gallants on the stage. . . . 
The first act begins. There is nothing but the rudest 
scenery. A battlemented city- wall behind the stage, 
with a placard hung out upon it indicating that the 
scene is Rome. As the play proceeds, the figure of a 
town makes way for some wooden rocks and a couple 
of trees, to signify the Hyrcanian forest. A damsel 
with a close-shaven chin wanders alone in the wood, 
lamenting her sad case. Suddenly a card-board dragon 
is thrust from the sides upon the stage, and she takes 
flight. The first act closes with a speech from an old 
gentleman arrayed in antique robes. He is the Chorus, 
and it is his business to explain what has happened to 
the damsel, and how in the next act, her son, a 
sprightly youth of eighteen, will conquer the dragon. 
During the course of the play, music is made for the 
recreation of the audience, with songs and ditties. 
The show concludes with a prayer for the Queen's 
Majesty, uttered by the actors on their knees." 

Again: "It is difiicult for us to realize the simplic- 
ity with which the stage was mounted in the London 
theaters. Scenery may be said to have been wholly 
absent." P. 297. "Actresses were never seen upon 
the stage. Beardless youths 'boyed' the greatness of 
Cleopatra and I^ady Macbeth, hobbledehoys 'squeaked' 
out the pathos of Desdemona and Juliet's passion". 
P. 60. "How could such characters (the female char- 
acters of the plays of Fletcher, Marston, Dekker and 
others) — not to speak of Imogen or Cleopatra, Con- 
stance or Katharine — have been represented on the 
English stage? Here, indeed, is a mystery. How 
could Shakespeare have committed Desdemona to a 



io6 



SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPKARK. 



boy?" The simple answer is, Shakespeare did not 
do it. 







Dowden says, 50: "A rude sketch of the interior of 
the Swan Theater, I^ondon, as it was about the 3^ear 



THl^ THE;ATERS in LONDON. I07 

1596, was not long since brought to light in the Uni- 
versity Library, Utrecht. It is from the hand of a 
learned Dutchman, Johannes De Witt, who visited 
England toward the close of the reign of Elizabeth. 
No other drawing of the interior of an Elizabethan 
theater is known to exist. ' ' 

"The stage, strongly supported on timber bulks, is 
occupied by three actors, and has for all its furniture 
a bench. Neither curtains nor traverses appear. At 
the back of the stage, which is open to the weather, is 
the tiring room, and above this rises a covered balcony, 
occupied by spectators, but available at need for the 
actors. The trumpeter is seen at the door of a covered 
chamber near the gallery roof. ' ' Id. 50. 

Chamber's Enc, "'Theatre", says of this drawing: 
"The only existing contemporary drawing of the 
Elizabethan stage is here reproduced from Dr. Gae- 
dertz' book on the 'Old English Stage'. It represents 
the Swan Theater in 1596. The drawing was made 
by one John De Witt, who visited lyOndon in 1596, 
and whose manuscript diary was discovered by Dr. 
Gaedertz in the Royal Library at Berlin. As a pic- 
ture of the stage in the time of Shakespeare it is of 
infinite value." 

The authors I have quoted assert that the stage 
was protected from the weather by a roof, but no one 
of them gives an authority for the fact. De Witt's 
picture shows that there was no such shelter at the 
Swan, and makes it probable that the other public 
theaters were constructed after the same fashion — and 
that the players, as well as the crowd in the pit, stood 
exposed to the weather. Fleay, Hist., 147, says of the 



I08 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPSARB;. 

Theater: "Being a public theater with daylight per- 
formances, (it) was open to the sky in the centre"; 
148: "The Curtain was a similar building to the 
Theater; and the Rose and Swan were similar to 
same". Therefore, the fact must be that all these 
theaters were as in De Witt's cut of the Swan, the 
stage as well as the pit open to the sky.* This cut 
enables us to understand Mr. Symonds imaginary pic- 
ture of the Fortune, before given. The lowest floor 
at the two sides of the stage is divided into rooms, or 
boxes, few in number; the second floor is the two- 
penny gallery, occupied by persons of the same order 
as those in the pit. Plainly, nine-tenths of the audi- 
ence consisted of what Mr. Symonds says were con- 
temptuously called groundlings or stinkards. 

Neither the Theater, nor the Curtain, was used 
exclusively for dramatic entertainments. Both were 
frequently engaged for matches and exercises in the 
art of fencing . . . and not only fencers, but 
tumblers and such like sometimes exhibited at these 
theaters". H.-P., 273. 

William Shaksper, as a player, first belonged to 
lyord Strange' s Company; soon after the death of 
Lord Strange, Lord Hunsdon became its patron, and 
when the second Lord Hunsdon became the Chamber- 
lain, 1593, it was called "the Chamberlain Company"; 
after 1603, and the accession of James, it became "The 
King's Company". In 1593, the Company opened in 



* Drake, chapter VII, says of tlie Globe Theater: "It -was con- 
structed of wood, and only partly thatched, its centre being open 
to the weather." 



The; the^aters in london. 109 

the old "Theater". Fleay, (25) says that before the 
establishment of the Chamberlain's Company, Shak- 
sper had often been obliged to travel, and to act 
about town in inn-yards. According to Halliwell- 
Phillips, I, 109, "Shakespeare's" first plays up to 
1594, were all written for Henslowe, and were acted 
under the sanction of that manager, by the various 
companies performing from 1592 to 1594 at the "Rose 
Theater and Newington-Butts". Fleay states posi- 
tively that player Shaksper had no connection with 
.the Rose. The Rose was not opened until 1592, and 
remained empty much of the ensuing twelve months. 
Mr. Fleay says (22): "The Chamberlain's players, 
however, did not act there, but under Shakespeare 
(Shaksper) and Burbage, re-opened the old Theater 
while Alleyn left them and acted with the Admirals at 
the Rose." In 1597, the old Theater having become 
ruinous, the Chamberlain's Company removed to the 
Curtain". Id. 31. 

In January, 1599, Burbage, the leader of this com- 
pany erected the Globe theater, and to this Shaksper 
belonged until he sold out and retired to Stratford in 
1610-11. "There is no proof that Shaksper ever 
acted at Blackfriars;* there is strong presumption to 

* On p; 233, Fleay, Hist., quotes the Athenaeum as follows: 
"It is now for the first time ascertained that the King's Com- 
pany were performing at the Blackfriars Theater as early as 
1608, and for the interesting fact that Shakespere was then one 
of their leading actors, we have the unquestioned authority of 
the Burbages in the well-known I/ord Chamberlain's records 
of 1635." On this Fleay remarks in foot-note: "There is not 
a particle of evidence for this rash statement, which is in direct 
contradiction with the records of 1635 therein referred to." 



no shakspe;r not shake;spe)are;. 

the contrary as to his supposed shares in that theater; 
it was the private inheritance of the Burbages, and 
that the King's men had shares in it at this time 
rests on the evidence of forged documents and mis- 
chievously fertile imaginations. " Fleay, lyife, 65. 

In 1 60 1, "a strolling detachment" of the Chamber- 
lain's Company (Shaksper being one of the strollers; 
Fleay, lyife, 43) wandered through England, and even 
into Scotland. Much of the playing of Shaksper' s 
associates and company was done in inn-yards in I^on- 
don and other towns, and at fairs and markets as. 
they tramped. In I^ondon, there were three or four 
such yards commonly used for that purpose, one of 
which was at the Red Bull Inn. In the inn-yards, 
the performances were "upon a temporary platform or 
stage in the middle of the open court yard, to which 
the galleries all around the court formed boxes for the 
chief spectators, while the poorest part of the audience 
stood in the court on all sides of the central stage. ' ' 
Enc. Brit., XXIII, 224. It is easy to see that the 
performance of a Shakespeare play, as written, in an 
inn-yard, must have been an impossibility; a naked 
extemporized stage, open to the weather overhead, 
everything in full view of the audience," the pit com- 
pletely surrounding the stage, and no scenery or pri- 
vacy. 

"To Eondon fled all the adventurers, vagabonds and 
paupers of the realm. They gathered around the 
play-houses. Here the ruffians, thieves, vagabonds, 
the apprentices, the pimps and prostitutes assembled — 
a dirty, stormy, quarrelsome multitude." Donnelly. 

"Beyond doubt," says Wendell, 41, ' ' the Elizabethaji 



THE) THBJATKRS IN LONDON. Ill 

theater of i^S'/ was ?iot a socially respectable place and 
Elizabethan theatrical people were very low company. ' ' 
That this was especially the case with the two public 
theaters, the "Theater" and the "Curtain", the fol- 
lowing extracts from Phillipps will show: "The Thea- 
ter appears to have been a very favorite place of amuse- 
ment, especially with the more unruly section of the 
populace." I, 354. "It is clear from these testi- 
monies that the 'Theater' attracted a large number of 
persons of questionable character to the locality." 
I, 358. In 1597, the lyord Mayor of lyondon charac- 
terized the theaters of the suburbs (the Theater 
and Curtain) as ordinary places for vagrant persons, 
masterless men, thieves, horse-stealers, whoremongers, 
cozeners, cony-catchers (z. e., sharpers), contrivers of 
treason, and other idle and dangerous persons to 
meet together." W., 57. "The crowds of disorderly 
people frequenting the Theater are thus alluded to", 
etc. H.-P., I, 355. Another allusion to the throngs 
of the lower orders attracted by the entertainments at 
the Theater occurs in a letter from the Ivord Mayor to 
the Privy Council, 13th December, 1595: "Among 
other inconveniences it is not the least that the refuse 
sort of evil disposed and ungodly people about this 
city have opportunity hereby to assemble together and 
to make their matches for all their lewd and ungodly 
practices, being also the ordinary places for all master- 
less men and vagabond persons that haunt the high- 
ways to meet together. " 1,355. 

A letter from the lyord Mayor to the Council of April 
12, 1580, says : "I have thought it my duty to inform 
your lyordship that the players of plays which are 



112 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAK^SPBARi;. 

used at the 'Theater' and other such places, and 
tumblers, and such like, are a very superfluous sort of 
men," etc. I, 355. On 193, Mr. Phillipps says that 
players were regarded in the last years of the sixteenth 
century in about the same light with jugglers and 
buffoons". "The puritanical writers of the time of 
Shakespeare were indignant at the erection of regular 
theatrical establishments, and the Theater and the 
Curtain were the special objects of their invective. 
They are continually named together as sinks of all 
wickedness and abomination," thus: "I am persuaded 
that Satan hath not a more speedy way and fitter 
school to work and teach his desires to bring men and 
women into his share of concupiscence and wicked 
whoredom than these places and plays and theaters". 
I, 365. "Rankins, in his Mirrour for Monsters, 1587, 
observes that the Theater and Curtain may aptly be 
termed for their abomination, 'the Chapel adulteri- 
num' ", 1,370. "The independent testimony of the 
author of the Newes from the North, 1579, is to a 
similar effect: 'I have partly showed you what leave 
and liberty the common people, namely youth, hath 
to follow their own lust and desire in all wantonness 
and dissolution of life; for further proof whereof I call 
to witness the Theaters, Curtains' ", etc. H.-P., id. 

"In the play-houses of L^ondon", observes Gosson, 
in his Player Confuted, "it is the fashion of youths 
to go first into the yard (the pit) and to carry their eye 
through every gallery; then, like unto ravens, where 
they spy the carrion thither they fly. ... he 
taketh himself for a jolly fellow, that is noted of 



the; theatb;rs in i,ondon. 113 

most to be busiest with women in all such places". 
H.-P., id. 

Symonds says: "The theaters of I^ondon were the 
resort of profligate and noisy persons. " On p. 277: 
"Three theaters at least were then (1576) estabHshed 
in the purheus of the city. The first of these was 
styled 'The Theater' ; the second was called the Cur- 
tain. Both were in Shoreditch, and both soon ob- 
tained a bad reputation for brawling, low company, 
and disreputable entertainments." 

On p. 306: "In the origin of the stage, theaters 
were closely connected with houses of public enter- 
tainment, inns, hostelries, places of debauch and 
brothels. . . . They formed a nucleus for what 
was vile, adventurous, and hazardous, in the floating 
population. . . . The actual habits of an audi- 
ence in a London theater may be imagined from more 
or less graphic accounts given by contemporary satirists 
as thus: 'In our assemblies at plays in London, you 
shall see such heaving and shoving, such itching and 
shouldering to sit by women . . . such playing 
at foot-saunt without cards; such ticking, such toying, 
such smiling, such winking, and such manning them 
home when the sports are ended,' " etc., etc. 

Mr. Symonds, 307, quotes Stubbes in his Anatomy 
of Abuses: "But mark the flocking and running to 
Theaters and Curtains, daily and hourly, night and 
day, time and tide, to see Plays and Interludes, where 
such wanton gestures, such bawdy speeches, such 
laughing and fleering, such kissing and bussing, such 
clipping and culling, such winking and glancing of 
wanton eyes and the like is used as is wonderful to 



114 SHAKSPBR NOT SHAKKSP:^AR:e. 

behold. Then, these goodly pageants being ended, 
every male sorts out his mate," etc., etc. "Many 
players, if reports are true, are common panders." 
On p. 309: "Women of loose life frequented them." 
"In the Actor's Remonstrance, 1643, this abuse of the 
player' s vocation is ingenuously admitted: 'We have 
left off for our part . . . that ancient custom which 
formerly^ rendered men of our quality infamous: namely, 
the inveigling of young gentlemen, merchants, factors 
and apprentices to spend their master's estates upon us 
and our harlots in taverns.' " "No woman might at- 
tend a play house unless masked." Knc. Brit., 
"Drama". "Girls of good character scarce dared to 
enter a play house. From ballads of the period we 
learn what was the peril to their reputations." Sy- 
monds. On p. 315, the same writer says: ' 'In slums and 
suburbs, purlieus and base quarters of the town stood 
these wooden sheds which have echoed to the verses 
of the greatest poet of the modern world." I deny 
that fact. The Shaksper commentators all assume 
that the Shakespeare plays were acted in these sheds, 
but history is silent on the matter, and the possibili- 
ties are the other way. 

I have summoned these witnesses to show what sort 
of places the public theaters were to which William 
Shaksper belonged during the whole of his life in Lon- 
don (for the Globe was just such a public theater as the 
Curtain) ; and the kind of people he has been supposed 

* "Formerly." It is highly probable that this custom pre- 
vailed while Shaksper was connected with the public theaters. 
Jonson, in his Poetaster, to be quoted presently, intimates as 
much. 



th:^ the;ate;rs in i^ondon. 115 

to have written the plays for; and a pretty showing it 
is! I doubt if in all I^ondon to-day, there is a place 
of public entertainment more debased than were the 
pubHc theaters in the time of BHzabeth; the pit 
crowded with rowdies, ruffians and "stinkards"; the 
boxes and galleries occupied by prostitutes and their 
paramours, (a decent girl could not set foot in the 
theater without peril to her reputation). What sort 
of men therefore must the players have been, who, 
year in and year out, purveyed to such audiences? 
"Tell me the company you keep, and I will tell you 
what you are", is a proverb in one form or other in 
every civilized language on earth. Evidently these 
players were vile, debauched, such as no reputable 
man would ask to his house, or be known to have ac- 
quaintance with. 

It could not have been possible that any man of 
cultivation between 1588 and 16 10 would go to that 
place of abomination — the public theater — to hear a 
play of any sort by Burbage, and Shaksper, and 
Heminge, and Condell.* As to the Shakespeare plays, 

* The writer of a paper in the Atlantic Monthly, March, 1898, 
in the character of a Dutch traveler in London, 1599, inditing 
a letter to a countryman, imagines a First Performance of a 
Shakespeare play, to-wit, Henry V, at the Curtain Theater. He 
describes his visit to that place of entertainment— says that it is 
a disreputable place, and that the rabble fill the pit. "An 
empty box near the stage presently was entered by three masked 
ladies attended; whose elaborate head gear and extensive ruffs 
betray high degree. One of them wore at her girdle a gorgeous 
pendant of diamonds. At a compliment" (in the chorus to fifth 
act) "to the 'gracious Empress', the chief of the masked ladies 
attracted notice; her mask suddenly dropped and revealed a 
damselof sixty-six, Elizabeth of England". A precious place, 



Il6 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPKARE). 

SO great an authority as Dr. Ingleby declares that we 
are but even now "slowly rounding fo a just estimate 
of Shakespeare's works' ' . It is not to be believed that 
in the period spoken of these works were appreciated 
or understood, or that they were eyer performed at 
length, or except in a very much abbreviated form, at 
a public theater. 

"During the absence of the strolling detachment 
(Shaksper being one of the strollers) Jonson's Poet- 
aster was produced, containing a vigorous attack on 
the Globe Company." Fleay, 43. From this I give 
the following: 

"What's he that stalks by thee, boy?" 

" 'Tis a player, sir." 

"A player! Call the lousy rascal hither. Do you 
hear, you player, rogue, stalker, come back here. 
You are proud, you rascal, are you proud, ha ? You 
grow rich, do you, and purchase, you two-penny tear- 
mouth. Come, we must have you turn fiddler again, 
slave, get a bass viol at your back, and march in a 
tawny coat with one sleeve to Goosefair! Dost thou 
not know that Pantalabus (Marston the plajn^vright) 
there; he is a gentleman you slave. Rascal, to him, 
cherish his muse, go ! He shall write for thee, slave ! 
If he pen for thee once, thou shalt not need to travel 
with thy pumps full of gravel any more, after a blind 
jade and a hamper, and stalk upon boards and barrel 
heads to an old cracked trumpet." 

"And what new matters have you now afoot, sir- 
rah?" 



truly, for a Oueen to be caught in, even in the imagination of a 
romancer. 



YHB^ THBAl^KRS m LONDON. II7 

"We have as mucli ribaldry in our plays as can be, 
as you would wish, captain; all the sinners in the 
suburbs come and applaud our action daily." 

"Well, go thy ways; my Poetaster shall make thee 
a play, and thou shalt be a man of good parts in 
it. . . . 

"lyct's have good cheer to-morrow night at supper, 
stalker, and then we'll talk. And do not bring your 
eating player with you there; I cannot away with him; 
he will eat a leg of mutton while I am in my porridge, 
the lean Poluphagus; nor the villainous out-of-tune 
fiddler, ^nobarbus, bring not him. Do not bring 
your ^sop, your politician; the slave smells ranker 
than some sixteen dunghills. Marry, you may bring 
Frisker, my zany; he's a good skipping swaggerer; 
and your fat fool there, my mango, bring him too; but 
let him not roar out his barren bold jests with a tor- 
menting laughter, between drunk and dry. 

"I have stood up and defended you, I, to gentlemen, 
when you have been said to prey upon puisnes (youths) 
and honest citizens; or when they have called you 
usurers or brokers, or said you were able to help to a 
piece of flesh, I have sworn I did not think so, nor 
that you were the common retreats for punks decayed 
in their practice, I cannot believe it of you". (Inti- 
mates that they were reported to be panders, and aux- 
iliary to the brothels). 

A pretty vigorous attack truly ! What manner of 
men, in their walk and conversation, must these Globe 
players have been, that Jonson should, in a published 
play, so represent them, or that he could do it with 
impunity. Which of these players satirized was 



Il8 SHAKSPllR NOT SHAKE;SPE;ARE;. 

William Shaksper, I cannot say. It may have been 
"Frisker, my zany", or "my mango", but the words 
"usurers and brokers" seem sufficiently to specialize 
the man. Malone said of this attack: "Shakspere has 
marked his disregard of the calumniator of his fame 
by not leaving him any memorial in his Will;" by 
which it appears that Malone understood Shaksper to 
be one of the persons attacked. As I have quoted 
from Fleay elsewhere: "All record of any real friend- 
ship between them (Jonson and Shaksper) ended in 
1603." 

I have described at some length the public theaters 
of the Shakespearean age, because, by the way the 
stage and the players are usually spoken of, one would 
think that an impression prevails that these play 
houses were something not much inferior to the best me- 
tropolitan theaters of to-day; and that the players were 
in their several ways, on a par with Garrick, or Kemble, 
Burton, or Jefferson, or Irving. The theaters were 
sheds, with accompaniments inexpressibly filthy; the 
audiences were, as Hamlet tells us, "groundlings, who 
for the most part, are capable of nothing but dumb- 
shows and noise' ' ; the players were low-lived black- 
guards, ran-away apprentices, bankrupt tradesmen and 
mechanics. Of this Globe Company, Burbage had 
been a carpenter; Heminge a grocer; and Shaksper a 
butcher. In the same connection Hamlet says: "O 
there be players that I have seen play . . . that 
have neither the accent of Christians, Pagan, nor 
man, have strutted so and bellowed" — words which 
applied to every member of the Globe Company, but 
especially to Burbage, who was renowned for the 



I'he; Thka'Te^rs in i^oNDoisr. 119 

strength of his lungs. Drake, ch. VII, expressly 
says of this Company, that "the exhibitions were 
chiefly calculated for the lower class of peo- 
ple"; and that the upper ranks and the critics gener- 
ally preferred the private theaters, which were smaller 
and more conveniently fitted up." The "lower class 
of people" in lyondon is, and always was, very low 
down indeed. 

This is the point I make and insist on, that the 
"upper ranks", and cultivated people, did not go to the 
public theater, and were never attracted thither by 
Shakespeare plays. In the Prologue to Henry VIII, 
which Fleay says was evidently written for the audi- 
ence at Blackfriars, a private theater — a shilling audi- 
ence instead of a two-penny one — the speaker under- 
takes that the spectators will get their shilling's worth 

in the two hours: 

"Only they 
That come to hear a merry, bawdy play, 
A noise of targets, and to see a fellow 
In a long motley coat, guarded with yellow, 
Will be deceived; for, gentle hearers, know 
To rank our chosen truth with such a show 
As fool and fight is, besides forfeiting 
Our own brains and the opinion that we bring. 
Will leave us never an understanding friend. ' ' 

That is tolerably plain! And it is aimed at the 
audiences of the public theaters, "If we were to pre- 
sent you such plays as you may see at the Globe, be- 
sides forfeiting our own self-respect, we should lose 
the friendship of every cultivated and decent man in 
this town". "A merry, bawdy play". If one wishes 
to see that sort of play, read Jonson's Bartholomew 



120 SHAESPE^R NOT shak:^sp:^ar:r. 

Fair, full of local allusions, satire, and personalities, 
horse-play, vulgarity, obscenity, and profanity. It 
would be impossible to perform this play, as written, 
before even the lowest audiences of to-day, but we are 
told that it was popular when it appeared, time of 
James I (1611). Doubtless, so much of it as was 
played at the Globe, pleased every class of frequent- 
ers, from the gallants on the stage to the groundlings 
in the pit, and the prostitutes in the galleries. 

Henslowe, in all the years during which Shaksper 
was in I^ondon, ran one or more theaters, especially 
the Rose and the Fortune, and he kept a diary which 
has been preserved, showing what plays were per- 
formed at his theaters, what he paid his players, and 
what he paid authors for plays, and what properties 
he furnished to the stage, etc. , etc. The presumption 
is that Henslowe was a typical manager. Fleay says 
of him, 117, Hist.: "Henslowe was an illiterate mon- 
eyed man, by trade a dyer", (all these managers and 
players seem to have been originally mechanics or 
workmen) "in practice a pawnbroker. . . . He 
managed to keep his actors in subservience and his 
poets in constant need by one simple method, viz. : by 
lending them money and never allowing their debts to 
be fully paid off". This sounds very much like Rat- 
sie's remarks on Shaksper; also the remarks from 
Crosse, 1603, quoted by Phillipps and hereafter given, 
believed by Phillipps to have been intended for Shak- 
sper; as to ' 'these copper-laced gentlemen (who) grow 
rich, purchase lands by adulterous plays, and not a 
few of them usurers and extortioners", etc. So I 
think we may accept the description of Henslowe as 



The; thejate^rs in london. 121 

typical of the managers of that day; and surely the 
criticisms of Hamlet upon the players and the audi- 
ences of 1 60 1 apply to the companies to which William 
Shaksper belonged, and to every theater with which 
he had any connection. 

There is no existing evidence that what we know as 
the Shakespeare plays were ever acted in any shape at 
a private I^ondon theater during the career of William 
Shaksper. There is not merely a lack of evidence 
that they we^^e ever acted at length at a public theater, 
but there is the strongest probability that they were 
7iever acted at all in such a theater, save in a greatly ab- 
breviated and altered form, interpolated with the gag 
of the day, or in dumb-show, burlesque and travesty. 

' 'At this public theater, to which every one could 
obtain access, and the lowest of the people resorted, 
the ordinary performances doubtless were of the 
coarsest description. Yet we are called upon to be- 
lieve that it was here that the wonderful works which 
we all so greatly admire, and feel that we can only 
properly appreciate by careful private study, were per- 
formed. Commentators say, 'We do not find that the 
plays attributed to Shakespeare were ever performed 
at any other theater'. They do not say, as they 
might: 'We do not find that they were ever performed 
at this'". Smith, 77. 

Morgan says, 261: "From what knowledge we 
possess of the tone and quality of the audiences of 
those days, it is not difficult to imagine the rudeness 
and crudity of the plays actually performed. Be- 
fore such an audience we are asked to believe that 
Hamlet and Wolsey delivered their soliloquies, Antony 



122 SHAKSPE^R NO'T SHAK^SPKARE;. 

his impassioned oratory, and Isabella her pious strains; 
whilst the clown and the pot-wrestlers discoursed 
among themselves of Athens and Troy; and Hecuba 
and Althea; of Galen and Paracelsus; of 'writ of de- 
tainer'; and 'fine and recovery' ". 

In Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, we get an inkling 
of the way in which a classical story was brought to 
the comprehension of the English public. The pup- 
pet-player lycatherhead and his man I^ittlewit who, the 
manager says, is his Burbage (evidently ridiculing the 
King's company) are showing their. mystery to Cokes, 
"an Ksquire of Harrow", the play being The Ancient 
Modern History of Hero and Leander. 

Cokes. "But you do not play it according to the printed book ? 
I have read that". 

Leath. "By no means, sir." 

Cokes. "No. How then?" 

Leath. "A better way, sir; that is too learned and poetical for 
our audiences; what do they ktiow what Hellespont is? Or 
what Abdyos is? or the other, Sestos hight?'''' 

Cokes. ^'■Thou art in the right; I do not know myself.'''' 

Leath. "No. T have entreated Master Littlewit to take a 
little pains to reduce it to a more familiar strain for our 
people." 

Cokes. "How, I pray thee, good Master Littlewit?" 

Lilt. "I have only made it a little easy, and modern for the 
times, that is all. As for the Hellespont, I imagine our 
Thames here; and the I^eander I make a dyer's son about 
puddle-wharf; and Hero a wench o' the Bank-side, who go-" 
ing over one morning to old Fish street, lyeander spies her 
land at Trig-stairs, and falls in love with her. ' ' 

The audience at one penny and two-pence per head, 
are gathered in and the play begins: 



The; 'THEjATieRS IN LONDON. 1 23 

Leath. ' 'Gentles, that no longer your expectations may wander, 
Behold our chief actor, amorous I/Cander, 
With a great deal of cloth, lapp'd about him like a scarf. 
For he yet serves his father, a dyer at Puddle- wharf ; 
Which place we'll make bold with, to call it our Abdyos, 
As the Bank-side is our Sestos; and let it not be denied us, 
Now as he is beating to make the dye take the fuller, 
Who chances to come by but fair Hero in a sculler; 
And seeing L,eander's naked leg and goodly calf 
Casts at him from a boat a sheep's eye and a half. 
Now she is landed, and the sculler come back 
By and by you shall see what Leander doth lack." 

Leath. "Ivcander does ask, sir, what fairest of fairs, 
Was the fare he landed but now at Trig-stairs. ' ' 
"It is Hero of the Bank-side", 
"Leander says no more, but as fast as he can 
Gets all his best clothes on, and will after to the Swan." 

Hero. "O I^eander, lycander, my dear, dear lycander, 
I'll forever be thy goose, so thou'lt be my gander." 

Lean. "And sweetest of geese, before I go to bed 
I'll swim over the Thames . . . 
. . . my goose, my dear friend 
Let thy window be provided of a candle end." 

Hero. Fear not, my gander, I protest I should handle 
My matters very ill, if I had not a whole candle." 

This is the way scenes from classically founded 
plays would be travestied at the Globe and Curtain, 
and we can see that the fun would suit the audience. 

The literary critic of the New York Tribune, of 
30th of July, 1897, in some remarks upon C. D. 
Warner's "The People for whom Shakespeare wrote", 
saj'-s: "Mr. Warner disappoints us by landing his 
reader at a station far short of complete knowledge. 
He has Jiothing to say about the pyschology of Eliza- 



124 SHAKSPKR NOT shaki;spe;ari^. 

betlian audiences, and that, after all, we want most to 
hear about. How far did contemporary sympathy for 
Shakespeare's Plays go? . . . These historians 
(Mr. Warner's predecessors) paint the audience vividly 
enough, but they make no attempt to divine its point 
of view, or to get at its spiritual side. No one thinks 
of discussing the probable effect upon such an audi- 
ence of the purely poetic felicities in Shakespeare," 
etc. The quotation I have given above from Jonson, 
shows clearly the point of view of the spectators, and 
is as applicable to the unlettered audiences at the 
public theaters, as to the similar audiences at Bar- 
tholomew Fair. Leatherhead explains that the story 
of I^eander and Hero "is too learned for our audi- 
ences". "What do they know what Hellespont is, or 
Abdyos, or Sestos! and Cokes, the country squire, 
says, 'Thou art in the right; I do not know myself.' " 
So I/ittlewit, the Burbage of this play, is instructed to 
"make it a little easy", which, as we have seen, he 
does. 

That is the way, in travesty or burlesque, and the 
only way, that scenes from classically founded plays 
could have been brought to the comprehension of the 
public theater audiences, and the exposition must 
have delighted the groundlings. I^eander and Hero, 
or Troilus and Cressida, in this easy and modern style, 
was comprehensible and worth the penny for standing 
room. 

From the nature of the public theater, an open shed, 
exposed to all sorts of weather, rain, sleet, snow, fog — 
black fog, yellow fog — thick enough to be cut with a 
knife, the performances limited to the last hours of a 



th:^ thkatkrs in LONDON. 125 

short afternoon (in L^ondon, in the winter months, the 
gas is Hghted by half past three and four o'clock — 
throughout the month of December the sun sets be- 
fore four o'clock — and many a day is so dark, and 
days together, that in all shops the burners are lighted) , 
nothing more than a few special scenes of a Shake- 
speare play could have been presented, had there been 
the will to present them. The audience must have a 
farce, a song and dance — in other words, one of 
Kempe's "jigges". If they did not get this, they 
would have pelted the players, or hooted them off the 
stage. Fleay says, p. 2, that, in 1586, when William 
Shaksper joined the players, "they probably acted 
mere interludes, not regular five-act plays. ' ' He also 
tells us that up to 1587, dumb shows had become par- 
ticularly popular, and that the Court performances up 
to 1592 consisted of interludes and masks. 

What one of these theater audiences was accustomed 
to, that it would have, and the probability is that 
during the whole of William Shaksper' s career as 
player or manager, mere interludes or special scenes 
only of plays were presented — and that largely in pan- 
tomime. "Shakespeare" makes Hamlet declare, in 
1603, that the groundlings, by which we are to under- 
stand the bulk of the audience at one of these theaters, 
had a capacity for 7iothiug but dumb -shows and noise. 
The dumb -show, the principal performance, being 
ended, there followed the ' 'jigs' ' Symonds tells us of, 
and the two hours entertainment came to an end. 
There is not a line of testimony opposed to the view 
that one of the principal attractions to the public the- 
ater was the dumb-show, 



126 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKE^SPEJARS;. 

The play of Titus Andronicus, put on the stage in 
1594, and exceedingly popular, we are told, could only 
have been played in pantomime, and so Knight intimates. 
In a presentation at Court, or at Grays Inn, the au- 
dience sheltered and the room lighted, doubtless a 
Shakespeare play might have been given in a some- 
what more extended form. No evidence has come to 
this age that a Shakespeare • play was ever performed 
at one of the private city theaters. Hamlet occupies 
109 pages in Knight's volumes, enough to fill six hours 
at a New York theater; Troilus and Cressida 97 pages; 
and lycar would fill five hours. 

Hamlet ridicules the style of playing in vogue thus: 

"Come, give us a taste of your quality, come, a passionate 

speech." 
I Play. "What'speech, my lord?" 

Ham. "I heard thee speak a speech once, — but it was never 
acted; or if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, 
pleased not the million, H was caviare to the general, but it was 
an excellent play, well digested in the scenes; set down with as 
much modesty as cunning. . . . One speech in it I chiefly 
loved; 'twas Eneas' tale to Dido. . . . If it live in your 
memory begin at this line, 'The rugged Pyrrhus' : 
' The rugged Pyrrhus — ^he, whose sable arms, 
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble 
While he lay couched in the ominous horse, 
Hath now this dread and black complexion smeared 
With heraldry more dismal; head to foot 
Now is he total gules; horridly tricked 
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, 
Bak'd and impasted with the parching streets. 
That lend a tyranous and damned light 
To their lord's murder; roasted in wrath and fire. 
And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore, 



THE THE;ATERS in LONDON. I27 

With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus 

Old grandsire Priam seeks.' So, proceed you." 

I Play. "But who, O who, had seen the mobled queen 

Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning the flames 
With bisson rheum, a clout upon that head 
Where late the diadem stood; 

When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport 
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs, 
The instant burst of clamor that she made 
Would have made milch the burning eyes of 

heaven 
And passion in the gods. " 

Pleay says, 228, that the play from which these 
lines are borrowed belonged to the Chapel children, 
but it is not impossible that the gifted Burbage had 
roared off this stuff at the Curtain or the Globe. 

When we read of Richard III being played at these 
public theaters, we may understand that a dozen heads 
were lopped, two boys were smothered, concluding 
with a desperate battle, represented b}^ four swords 
and bucklers, at least three dead men left on the field. 
This gave Burbage, before he became one of the dead 
men, the opportunity to utter his historic yell for a 
horse. When we read of Henry IV being played, it 
means that fat Jack made the pit merry, and that 
Dame Quickly and Doll Tearsheet were among sym- 
pathizing friends. ("Doll Tearsheet was long in the 
public mind." Ingleby, note to p. 90.) They got off 
all the obscene dialogue that is not spoken now-a-days, 
and extemporized ten-fold more than was found in the 
text. Mr. Phillipps expressly tells us, I, 117, that 
Shakspef s sole aim was to please an audience most of 



128 SHAKSPBR NOT SHAKI^SPEJARE;. 

whom, be it remembered, were not only illiterate, but un- 
able to either read or write. ' ' 

Further, when we are told that Hamlet or Romeo, 
or I^ear, or Richard III, were played at these same 
theaters, we have no assurance that they were the 
Shakespeare plays of those names, or scenes from 
them.. Many of the Shakespeare plays were based 
on earlier ones, or sketches of similar name. Fleay, 
in a dozen instances, shows this. He speaks, page 13, 
of a version of Romeo and Juliet, anterior to Shake- 
speare;* on page 16, of the re- fashioning of an old 
play of Henry VI; on page 23, of "the old Hamlet 
and the Taming of the Shrew"; on page 42, of "the 
old Hamlet of Kyd"; of playing, in 1601, All's well 
that Ends Well, "a considerable portion of which is 
of much earlier date"; of a version of Troilus and 
Cressida; page 53, of the tragedy of King I^ear being 
founded on an old comedy of that name. On page 149, 
we read that the second Quarto of Hamlet was pub- 
lished 1604, "newly reprinted and enlarged at almost 
as much again as it was".t 

In February, 1 600, Sir Charles Percy and others spoke 
to the players to have the play of the deposing and 
killing of King Richard II to be played, etc. Au- 
gustine Phillipps, Ingleby, 36. In the note Ingleby 

* Craik speaks of a drama founded on the story of Romeo 
and Juliet, as far back as 1562. 

t An allusion by Nash, printed in 15S9, as a reprint of 1587, 
(when William Shaksper was but 23 years old, and had been 
out of Stratford but one or two years, or else had just come 
from Stratford, according to Fleay), shows that Hamlet was al- 
ready familiar with the stage. 



the; THEIATSRS IN LONDON. 1 29 

says: "That there is room for doubt whether the play- 
ordered was Shakespeare's Richard II, or another on 
the same subject, is seen by Professor Dowden's com- 
ment 'that this was Shakespeare's play is very un- 
likely.' " 

Gifford tells us that Malone says: "There were two 
preceding dramas (z. e. to Henry VI) one of which 
was called the Contention of York and I^ancaster. 
Why then, might not this be the drama meant (by 
Jonson's skit)? But were there not two score old 
plays on this subject on the stage? Undoubtedly 
there were." Whence it appears that in many cases 
there were both ancient and recent plays bearing the 
same name, or treating of the same subject; and that 
there were various versions of a given play, abridged 
or altered for one purpose or other. Collier, XI, says: 
"Henslowe's Diary shows that the I^ord Chamberlain's 
and the Lord Admiral's servants had joint possession 
of the Newington theater from 3rd June, 1594, to the 
15th Nov., 1595; and during that period, various 
pieces were performed, which in their titles resembled 
plays which unquestionably came from Shakespeare's 
pen. That none of them were produced by our great 
dramatist, it is of course impossible to affirm; but the 
strong probability seems to be, that they were older 
dramas, of which he subsequently more or less availed 
himself. Among these was a 'Hamlet', acted on nth 
June, 1594; a 'Taming of a Shrew', acted on nth 
June, 1594; an ' Andronicus' , acted on 12 June, 1594; 
a 'Venetian Comedy', acted on 12th Aug., 1594; a 
'Caesar and Pompey', acted 22nd June, 1596. Also, 
I, VI: "In both the latter cases (Pericles and Troilus 



130 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKEJSPKARK. 

and Cressida) , it would likewise seem that there were 
plays by older or rival dramatists upon the same inci- 
dents. " It is noticeable that in no instance is it said 
that a play "by William Shakespeare" was performed, 
or a ' 'Shakespeare' ' play. The mere title of the play 
is given, as Richard III, Hamlet, etc., and that they 
were in all cases, or in any case where there were two 
or more plays bearing the same name, the plays we 
receive as Shakespeare's, no man at this day can possi- 
bly know. The whole matter was left as mysterious 
as possible, Hepworth Dixon, in his Personal Me- 
moirs of Lord Bacon, speaking of the incident con- 
nected with the conspiracy of Essex which I have 
above recited,. says: "Lord Monteagle tells him (Au- 
gustine Phillipps) that they want to have played 
Shakespeare's deposition of Richard Second." The 
naming of this play as Shakespeare's is Mr. Dixon's, 
for Phillipps, in his deposition, did not mention the 
word Shakespeare. He said that they wanted "to 
have the play of the deposing", etc. See Ingleby, 36. 
Eleay, Hist., on pp. 121-125, gives a complete list of 
the Court Performances from 1594 to 1603. Nowhere 
is it said that a "Shakespeare" play, or a play by 
"Shakespeare" was given. On pp. 169-178, he con- 
tinues the list to 1 614. He copies and includes in this 
a forged list, which he expressly so designates ( 1 70) , 
"but undoubtedly based on a genuine document which 
was used by Malone, of the plays at Court, and pub- 
lished in the Revels Accounts for the Shakespeare 
Society, b}^ Mr. P. Cunningham' ' . This was for the 
season 1604-5. Several plays with names similar to 
those of Shakespeare plays are named, and Mr. Fleay, 



the; thejaters in i^ondon. 131 

without apparent authority, puts in brackets "by 
Shakespeare". Thus: "1604, Nov. i— Kings Men,— 
The Moor of Venice (by Shakespeare)". The forged 
list, verbatim et literatim, is given in PhilHpps, II, 162, 
and the entry corresponding to the one just quoted 
from Fleay reads: -'Hallamas Day being the first of 
November A Play in the Banketing House att Whit- 
hall called the Moor of Venice;" and there is no name 
of the author attached to it. 

Another entry is this: "On Stivens Night in the 
Hall A Play called Mesur for Mesur. " Another: "On 
Shrovsunday a Play of the Merchant of Venice' ' . In 
the margin against the last two of these plays is the 
name "Shaxberd." On p. 161, Phillipps expressly 
says that this record is "a modern forgery". 

Now the object of this forgery was to make it ap- 
pear that Shakespeare's Othello, first published in 
quarto, in 1622, had been played years before, or in 
1604; and Measure for Measure, first published in the 
Folio of 1623, had been played in 1604, and the forger 
attached the name Shaxberd to the latter — one of 
player Shakspers many designations — as the author, 
Fleay translates Shaxberd into Shakespeare, quite an- 
other individual. 

It is amusing to see how the Shakespeare editors 
forthwith took the benefit of these forgeries. Knight, 
in his edition of the Shakespeare Plays, New York 
reprint, 1868, prefaces Measure for Measure thus: 
* 'This comedy was first printed in the folio collection 
of 1623. It has been recently ascertained that Measure 
for Measure was presented at Court by the King's 



132 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKISSPBARB;. 

Players (the company to wliicli Shaksper belonged) in 
1604." 

[So few and so unimportant liave been the testi- 
monies as to William Shaksper' s theatrical career, so 
lacking evidences of any connection between the man 
and the Shakespeare plays, that there seems to have 
been a constant temptation among his biographers, or 
the commentators on his supposed plays, to manufacture 
testimony and evidence. Hence all sorts of forgeries. 
A singular instance is mentioned by Dowden, 104: 
"In January, 1852, an eminent member of the 
(Shakespeare) Society of England, J. Paine Collier, 
announced that three years previously he had obtained 
from the bookseller Rodd a copy of the second Folio 
Shakespeare, containing many annotations in a hand 
about the middle of the 17th century. Collier sup- 
posed, or pretended to suppose, that the numerous 
corrections of the text, stage directions, etc. , were the 
work of an early owner of the volume, who through 
his connection with the theater and attendance at per- 
formances of the plays, had sources of trustworthy in- 
formation as to the genuine text. When, in 1859, 
this Folio was submitted to the scrutiny of experts, the 
manuscript notes were declared to have been modern 
forgeries. Pencil tracing was found to have guided the 
pen in its simulation of a 17th century handwriting. 
Competent authorities could not be deluded, and un- 
fortunately evidence had accumulated to confirm the 
impression that this really learned and ingenious 
scholar, in not a few instances, had yielded to the 
temptation to win for himself by fraudulent documents 



thb; thi;ai*e;rs in i^ondon. 133 

a spurious fame. It seemed to be the very wantonness 
of literary dishonesty."] 

Returning to Fleay, following his list, we reach 
the dates 1611-12, and half a dozen entries of plays 
performed by the King's men in these years are given. 
Among these there is no mention of a play as Shakes- 
peare's. I give one example: "To J. Hemynge on 12 
Feb'y, 161 1, for 15 plays before the King, Queen, and 
Prince, by the King's men." 

This 1611-12 list is another of Cunningham's for- 
geries, and Mr. Fleay says, 173: "It is the most 
glaringly impudent of the many forgeries published by • 
Cunningham and Collier," etc. On p. 177, he speaks 
again of the forgeries of 1604-5, and now adds: "So 
that the entries of the Moor of Venice, The Spanish 
May, etc., are as yet very dubious." Outside of the 
forged lists, from 1603 to 1614, I find no play given as 
Shakespeare's (merely the title) till we come to 
1 6 1 2- 1 3 . Here the Revels Account represent Heminge 
as paid for fourteen plays by the King's men, without 
names of the plays; but Fleay gives the names from 
some other manuscript source, — "Winter's Tale", etc.; 
and adds iu brackets, apparently without authority, 
"by Sh." All this goes to establish the point I make 
that between 1594 and 16 14, it is never said in the 
original authorities that a "Shakespeare" play is 
played, or one by Shakespeare; and consequently 
where there were two or more plays of similar title 
we never can be sure that a Shakespeare play was per- 
formed. 

Israel Gollancz, in the Othello of the Temple Shake- 
speare, 1895, traces the story that this play was acted 



134 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKB;SP:eAR:e. 

in 1604 to Malone (1821), who said: "We know it 
was acted in 1604, and I have therefore placed it in 
that year." Gollancz goes on: "For twenty years 
scholars sought in vain to discover upon what evi- 
dence he k7iew this important fact, until at last, about 
the year 1840, Peter Cunningham announced his dis- 
covery of certain accounts of the Revels at Court, con- 
taining the following item, viz.: the Hallamas Day 
item, which I have given. Gollancz continues: "We 
know that this manuscript was a forgery, but strange 
to say there is every reason to believe that though the 
book itself is spurious, the information which it gives 
is genuine, ' ' etc. Surely this has an ancient and fish- 
like smell. It is plain that the Shaksperians were too 
much delighted with having found these entries of the 
early performing of certain plays to give them up, and 
they would accept any pretext for not doing so. 
Othello was first printed in 1622, and was entered on 
the Stationers' Register in 1621. There was a play 
styled "Venetian Comedy", mentioned in Henslow's 
Diary as performed 13 Aug., 1594. Also there was a 
play called the "Moor of Venice" which the Secretary 
of the German Embassy wrote he had seen in lyondon, 
at the Globe, in 16 10. Judge Holmes says on this, II, 
716: "It is quite possible, not to say highly probable, 
that this was an older play by some other author, and 
not the Othello of Shakespeare. ' ' And again : ' 'There 
is reason for the opinion that nothing was known of 
the Shakespeare Othello until it appeared in the Quarto 
of 1622." The motive for Cunningham's forgery is 
apparent. It was the way to eliminate all doubt as to 
the earlier play being Shakespeare's" (Shaksper's). 



THE) THKATBRS IN LONDON. 1 35 

Whatever the play at a public theater was, it was 
necessarily short, (both Symonds and Drake tell us 
that the whole show, the play and subsequent farce, 
occupied about two hours) and boisterous, and suited 
to an illiterate, brutal audience. Symonds gives an 
imaginary visit to the Fortune in summer time, but as 
a rule, at that season of the year, the companies were 
strolling up and down the land. So we learn from 
Phillipps: ' 'AH the old theatrical companies were more 
or less of an itinerant character". Again: "The 
actors of those days were, as a rule, individual wan- 
derers". Also: "There was not a single company of 
actors in Shakespeare's time, which did not make pro- 
fessional visits throughout nearly all the Knglish 
counties." H.-P., II, 395. 

[Fleay, L^ife, 41, says: "In March, 1601, the 
Chamberlains Company visited the Universities of 
Oxford and Cambridge. Their travels however were 
not confined to England. In October, they had 
reached Aberdeen." 

Elizabeth died 24th March, 1603, and Phillipps sug- 
gests that the company to which Shaksper belonged 
might have been absent on a provincial tour. (Phillipps 
is trying to account for the fact that his "great dra- 
matist" gave forth no lamentation on the death of the 
Queen). "They itinerated a good deal during the 
next few months (z. e., after May, 1603), records of 
their performances being found at Bath, Coventry, 
Shrewsbury, and Ipswich." I, 211. 

' 'The company are found playing at Oxford in the 
early part of the summer of 1604." Id. 214. 

"On October 9th, 1605, Shakespeare's company, 



136 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPBARE). 

having previously traveled as far as Barnstable, gave 
another performance before the Mayor and Corpora- 
tion of Oxford. " Id., 214. 

"A considerable portion of 1606 was spent by the 
King's company in provincial travel. They were 
at Oxford in July, at lycicester in August. Before the 
winter had set in they had returned to lyondon". 
Id., 219. 

"Shakespeare's company were playing at Oxford on 
September 7th, 1607". Id., 219. 

At the time that the Sonnets issued from the press 
(1609), the author's company was itinerating in Kent, 
playing at Hythe on the i6th of May, and at New 
Romney on the following day. They were also at 
Shrewsbury at some unrecorded period in the same 
year." Id., 227. 

Plainly these companies were absent from London a 
larger part of the year. In the spring and summer 
and part of the autumn they strolled, and gathered to 
London before the Christmas holidays.]* 

Leonard Digges, Ing. 231; in some doggerel verses 
prefixed to an edition of Shakespeare's poems, in 1640, 
alluding to the Shakespeare plays as he remembered 
them, says that the audience at the Globe (this must 
have been as a boy, for Digges was born in 1588, or he 
may be telling what he has heard from other people) 
were ravished: 

. . . when Cesar would appeare. 
And on[^tlie stage at halfe-sword parley were, 
Brutus and Cassius . . . 



* Lee says, 40: "Few companies remained in lyondon during 
the summer or early Autmnn". 



the; thkatkrs in i^ondon. 137 

. . . let but Falstaffe come, 
Hall, Poins, the rest you scarce shall have a roome. 
All is so pestered; let but Beatrice 
■ And Benedicke be seene, loe in a trice 
The Cockpit Galleries, Boxes, all are full 
To hear Malvolio,® that crosse garter'd Gull. 

The audiences of that day did not go to the Curtain 
or the Globe that they might be worried with Wol- 
sey's waihngs, or wearied with Macbeth's soHloquies; 
they did not go to moraHze and weep. They went for 
fun and frolic, ribaldry and horse-play. The more 
farcical the play, the more indecent, the more bloody 
and cruel, the better for Shaksper's hat. We are told 
by Phillipps, I, 100, that "the audiences of Elizabeth's 
day revelled in the very crudity of the horrible, so much 
so that nearly every kind of bodily torture and mutila- 
tion, or even more revolting incidents, formed part of 
the stock business of the theater; murders were in 
special request in all kinds of serious dramas." 

Mr. Phillipps tells us that the play of Titus Andron- 
icus was very popular, that it was produced before a 
large audience on Jan. 23, 1594, and that it was played 
at several theaters in the year it appeared. (How 
could that have been if William Shaksper wrote 
it for his theater, and owned the right to it?) Let us 

* Digges apparently has mixed the Twelfth Night with Much 
Ado About Nothing, but I apprehend that scenes from the two 
had been~combined for the interlude or pantomime offered to 
the clients of the Globe. Fifty years after the death of William 
Shaksper, Davenant brought out a play called ' 'The Law against 
Lovers' ' made out of Measure for Measure and Much Ado About 
Nothing. 



138 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKEJSPE^AR:©. 

look at this play and see what pleased a public theater 
audience in Shaksper's day. 

The first Act discovers the sons of the Roman gen- 
eral, Titus Andronicus, about to slay Alarbus, their 
prisoner, son of the Gothic Queen Tamora, whom, 
with the queen, the Romans have captured in war. 

"Away with him, and make a fire straight; 
And with our swords, upon a pile of wood, 
Let's hew his limbs till they be clean consumed." 

Soon we are informed that 

' 'Alarbus' limbs are lopped. 
And entrails feed the sacrificial fire." 

Next, Titus, in a rage, kills one of his sons, Mutius. 
The sons of Tamora, whom the Roman king Satur- 
ninus marries, kill Bassianus, the king's brother, and 
throw his body into a hole or pit in the forest. Hav- 
ing enticed the beautiful I^avinia, the young wife of 
Bassianus, and daughter to Titus, into this forest, they 
ravish her and cut off both hands, cut out her tongue, 
and turn her loose, thinking she will be unable to de- 
nounce them. All this deviltry is done at the instiga- 
tion of Tamora, who hounds the boys on, urging the 
killing I^avinia after the ravishment. The negro 
Aaron, a fiend incarnate, all the while the paramour of 
Tamora, entices two other sons of Titus into the same 
forest, and gets both to descend to the bottom of the 
pit in which Bassianus had been thrown, under the 
pretense that it was a panther's den. Then he informs 
the king that they are there, and that they murdered 
Bassianus; on which the sons are brought forth and 



the; theaters in london. 139 

put in prison. Presently word comes from the king to 
Titus that if lie will cut off one of his own hands and 
send it to the king, his sons will be freed. Titus does 
this, getting Aaron to chop off the member; and the 
next we see is a messenger bringing back the same 
hand, and the heads of the two boys on a platter. In 
the following Act, lyavinia takes the end of a staff in 
her mouth, and guiding it with her stumps, writes in 
the sand the names of her ravishers, and so informs 
her brothers. 

Meantime Queen Tamora is delivered of a blacka- 
moor child, and the nurse appears with the child in her 
arms, seeking the sons of the queen, with directions to 
them to kill it. This they are about to do, when Aaron 
appears and carries off the child as his own son and 
property. But before he departs, he and the sons kill 
the nurse as the sole witness of the birth — Aaron 
mocking — "Weke, weke — so cries a pig prepared for 
the spit". 

In Act V, Titus enters with a knife and lyavinia 
with a basin, and the former cuts the throats of the 
sons of Tamora, while Lavinia catches the blood. 
Out of the bodies and blood Titus cooks a meal which 
is set before Tamora, and of which she unwittingly 
eats. Thereupon Titus taunts her with the horror, 
and ends by killing her; and in return her husband 
Saturninus kills Titus, and one of Titus' sons kills 
Saturninus. (It reminds one of the piling up of 
"stiffs" outside the saloon doors in the old days of 
Nevada). 

The play closes with Lucius, another son of Titus (he 
had a score) ordering Aaron to execution, ' 'See justice 



140 shakspe;r not shakkspkare;, 

done to Aaron, the damn'd Moor," who probably was 
drawn and quartered forthwith, on the stage, A de- 
Hghtful play, doubtless every act encored, and played 
often (very popular we are assured) in several theaters. 
Of the persons represented not more than four or five 
come out alive, and one of these has been ravished 
and fearfully maimed. Titus Andronicus could only 
have been played in pantomime. Knight says that 
these theaters used blood as they would the paint of 
the property-man of the theater; and this was years 
after William Shaksper became one of the players. 

Knight says of Romeo and Juliet: ' ' There is enough 
for the excitement of an uninstructed audience; the 
contest between the houses; Mercutio killed; Tybalt 
killed; the apparent death of Juliet; Paris killed; 
Romeo swallowing poison; Juliet stabbing herself." 

"In 1594, there was published " The Tragical 
Reign of Selim, Emperour of the Turks' ' , a composi- 
tion offering similar attractions (z. e., murders), but 
the writer was so afraid of his massacres being con- 
.sidered too insipid, that he thus reveals his misgivings 
to the audience: 

" 'If this First Part, gentles, do like you well 
The Second Part shall greater murders tell" ' H-P. 

"The 'old Jeronimo' — perhaps the most popular 
play of the early stage, thus concludes with a sort of 
chorus spoken by a ghost: — 

' ' 'Ah now my hopes have end in their effects. 
When blood and sorrows finish my desires, 
Horatio murdered in his father's bower; 
Vile Serberine by Pedringano slain; 



YHB I^HEJATE^RS in tONDON. 14I 

Fair Isabella by herself misdone; 
Prince Balthasar by Belimperia stabbed; 
The Duke of Castile, and his wicked son, 
Both done to death by old Hieronymo' ". 

" This slaughtering was accompanied with another 
pecuHarity of the unformed drama — the dumb- show. 
Words were sometimes necessary for the exposition of 
the story . . . With a stage that presented attrac- 
tions like these to the multitude, is it wonderful that 
the young Shakspere should have written a Tragedy 
of Horrors?" (/. e., the Titus). Knight, Shakspere, 
I, 675. 

Everywhere we find that the Shakespeare plays were 
shortened for performing, and nowhere do we find that 
one of these plays was performed at length. ' 'They were 
shortened for Court representation' ' , Fleay expressly 
tells us. In the lyife, 20, he speaks of the strollers 
cutting down their plays. "It was more profitable to 
separate into parties of half a dozen, and of course, 
to cut down their plays' ' . As for the theaters, on p. 
263, we read that the Quarto 2nd Henry VI, "is 
greatly abbreviated for acting"; on 269. he says of 
same Quarto: "The corruption and omission caused 
by shortening for stage purposes has been so great' ' , 
etc. On 275: "The 1597 Quarto of Richard 3rd is 
evidently an abridged version made for the stage, and 
no doubt was the version acted during nearly all of 
Elizabeth's reign." On 227: "Hamlet, Folio, is 
evidently a stage copy, considerably shortened for 
stage representation. ' ' Plainly, no play was given as 
"Shakespeare" wrote it, but there were versions. 



142 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKESPEARE;. 

more or less shortened, for the actors on tramp, for 
the theaters, even for the representation at court. 

I once saw at a great historical English fair — in fact, 
Greenwich Fair, since suppressed — a perambulating 
company of players, performing under a tent — giving 
a tragedy after the pattern described by Sidney, a 
farce, a dance and song — all within the period of forty 
minutes. The audience was rung out, and the clown, 
with his trumpet, just as in De Witt's picture, notified 
the public that another performance of the same de- 
scription was ready to begin. And so it was kept up 
all day. That is the way the strolling company must 
have managed in Shaksper's day.* To pay expenses, 
the play must necessaril}'- have been short, and the 
performance repeated the day long. When in lyondon, 
from the limited time at disposal, the performances 
could not have been given at much greater length. 

It is a mistake caused by a misapprehension of the 
facts to say, as R. G. White does, and as John Fiske 
does, that William Shaksper wrote the Shakespeare 
plays "to fill the theater and his own pockets." Had 
the manager attempted a course of Shakespeare plays, 
he would have bankrupted the theater. According to 
White, the raisoji d'etre for the writing of these plays 
was that they might be acted at William Shaksper's 
theater. If they were not — and they certainly were 
not, because in the nature of the case acting them 

■•■■ Craik I^ 598, speaking of Rowley, mentions the "fact re- 
corded by L,angbaine. that certain of the scenes of one of his 
pieces, A Shoemaker's a Gentleman, was commonly performed 
by the strolling actors at Bartholomew and Southward fairs. ' ' 



^HE) 'THE^ATKRS in LONDON. 143 

there was impossible — then there was no reason why- 
William Shaksper should worry himself by writing 
plays. 

Mrs. Pott says: "These plays were intended for 
the most part, not for the play-house, but for perform- 
ance before Elizabeth and James, or by the servants 
of, or at the houses of, the Barls of lyeicester, Essex, 
Sussex and Pembroke. Many of them first saw the 
light in the Middle Temple, and in the new hall of 
Gray's Inn. ' ' Another authority tells us that ' 'most of 
the plays first appeared on the occasion of some grand 
festivity, and many of them are not known to have 
been acted on the public stage or by Shakespeare's 
(Shaksper' s) Company. ' ' 

Fleay insists on the point of the absolute subordina- 
tion of public performances to court presentations. 
The Chamberlain's Company, later the King's Com- 
pany, might give a scene or a play in any manner 
they saw fit at their public theater; but at court they 
were expected to give the best — the most entertain- 
ing — performances of which they were capable, and 
we are expressly told that for these performances the 
plays were shortened. No doubt, the play of Hamlet 
performed at court was cut down four- fifths, the larger 
part of the dialogue, all the speeches, and all the 
philosophy being rejected; the action and enough of 
the text to explain it retained. It is to be supposed 
that some Shakespeare scenes must have been found en- 
tertaining at court, else they would not have been given; 
but not a soul who ever witiiessed a presentatio7i has left 
a ivord concemzjig it. I suspect the fun of the exhibi- 
tion consisted in AUeyn's and Burbage's rant and fus- 



144 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSP:eAR:e. 

tian, and in the Jim Crow antics of Rolfe's Kempe, 
and his pupil in comedy, William Shaksper. What 
were the rejected parts in the play of Hamlet for, if 
Shaksper was its author? Wendell says of another 
play, that even an Elizabethan audience could scarcely 
have stomached the prolonged philosophizing which 
fills pages of Troilus and Cressida. What was it 
there for, if Shaksper was the author ? There was no 
money in it — quite the contrary — and the one object 
of this man's life was money. So R. G. White, and 
Phillipps, and all the commentators, ending with Wen- 
dell, tell us; so, also, John Fiske tells us. Why should 
a man intent on collecting pennies in hat at his own 
theater concern himself about other men's theaters, or 
the audiences at court, when all he wanted for the hat 
were the horrors of Titus Andronicus, or Macbeth, or 
the third Henry VI; or the murders of Richard and 
the fight of Bosworth Field ? Why should he waste 
his valuable time in elaborating plays for managers of 
other theaters, or for the court? And, especially, 
why should he a second time take these plays in hand, 
revise and amend, and further extend them by one- 
fourth to fully twice their length, merely to please a 
reading public that would, as to most of the plays, 
not see them till years after he was in his grave, and 
without his estate or his family being benefited to the 
extent of one copper! 

Swinburne, "Shakespeare", speaks of "the patience 
and self-respect which induced Shakespeare to re-write 
the triumphantly popular parts of Romeo, of Falstaff, 
and of Hamlet, with an eye to the literary perfection 
and performance of work, which in its first outline had 



The; THEJATEIRS IN I^ONDON. 1 45 

won the crowning suffrage of immediate and specu- 
lative applause." Is Mr. Swinburne quizzing the man 
of Stratford ? 

The theory that this revising and elaborate amend- 
ing (with "consummate skill," etc.,) was done by the 
man who wrote the plays, if Shaksper, does not run on 
all fours with the other and usual theory that this man 
had tossed them off as pot-boilers, without study or 
preparation, and cared nothing for them thereafter. 

Fleay, 227, says: "Hamlet is extant in three forms, 
the Folio, which is evidently a stage copy considerably 
shortened for stage purposes; the 1604 Quarto, which 
is a very fair transcript of the author's complete copy 
with a few omissions; and the 1603 Quarto, imperfect 
and inaccurate." On 230: "This form of Hamlet (the 
1603 Quarto) seems to have been an unfinished re- 
fashioning of the old play by Kyd, that had so long been 
performed by the Chamberlain's men' ' ; i. e. , up to 1601 , 
at least, the date at which Mr. Fleay supposes the 1603 
Quarto to have been prepared. On 233: "We have, in 
the forms of this play, an example of Shakespeare's 
hurried revision of the works of an earlier writer; of 
the full working out of his own conception in the shape 
fittest for private reading (the 1604 Quarto), and, 
finally, of his practical adaptation of it to the require- 
ments of the stage." (The Folio.) This substan- 
tiates the view which I have taken that the Shakespeare 
plays were written for private reading, and not for the 
public theaters. To fill the theater, which White and 
Fiske say was William Shaksper' s great object in life 
(adding, however, "and his own pockets"), it seems 
that the '"imperfect and inaccurate" Quarto of 1603 



146 , SHAKSPER NCT SHAKESPSARB;. 

was enougli for many years, the abridgment of the 
1604 Quarto, according to Fleay, not having been 
made before 1609, or 1610, just as Shaksper was re- 
tiring to Stratford. 

All that William Shaksper wanted in order to fill 
the theater and his own pockets was a rapid and bloody 
interlude, and plenty of extemporaneous and ribald 
dialogue. Anything beyond that would be a violation 
of the rights of the groundlings, to be vigorously re- 
sented. There is no Shakespeare play in which the 
dialogue or monologue, in excess of what was essential 
for such an audience, was not in the proportion of 
twenty to one. Was William Shaksper, as the ad- 
miring Phillipps depicts him, the sort of man to 
labor over what was worthless and unendurable from 
the theater and pocket point of view, to be making 
future ages his first thought and his pocket the sec- 
ond; or carried away by the divine afflatus inspira- 
tion as Phillipps calls it, to forget pocket entirely? 
Not much! Dr. Ingleby thinks that "the drift of his 
plays must have been intelligible to the penny knaves 
who pestered the theaters, but his profound reach of 
thought and his unrivaled knowledge of human nature 
was as far beyond the vulgar ken as were the higher 
graces of his poetry. It is to men of sensibility 
that Shakespeare" (not Shaksper) "appeals as a man 
of genius; and it is to the literary class we must look 
for the impress of that genius". Preface, XII. And 
he adds: "We are at length slowly rounding to a just 
estimate of his works." If this language of Dr. 
Ingleby means anything, it is that the plays of 
Shakespeare were written for the literate class — not 



¥he^ i*he;ate;rs in toNDON. . 147 

the illiterate — and that it is but now, at the close of 
the nineteenth century, fully three hundred years 
after they were written, that the literate class is slowly 
rounding to a just estimate of them. (As we have be- 
fore seen, Ingleby expressly says that for a full hun- 
dred years from 1592 these plays were not much 
thought of. ) Very slowly indeed it would seem, when a 
lecturer in one of our foremost universities can teach his 
pupils that the writing of such plays as Shakespeare' s is 
"within anybody's power;" and that to have created 
Shakespeare's works involved no more wonderful an im- 
aginative feat than did the achievement of his material 
fortune by showman Shaksper. Dr. Rolfe, who claims 
to be an authority on these plays, affirms that the au- 
thor of them "had little Latin, perhaps none", echo- 
ing the words of Ben Jonson on Stratford Shaksper; 
and here comes Dr. P'iske pulling tandem to the same 
team. "Little Latin, perhaps none" is another way 
of saying that the man who wrote the Shakespeare 
plays was an uneducated man. 

If the plays have not yet come to be understood and 
appreciated by these learned and literate gentlemen, 
we may be sure that they were far above the best 
heads of the i6th csntury, and quite out of sight of 
the vulgar. Therefore we are safe in asserting that 
they were not written for the stinkards and prostitutes 
of William Shaksper' s theaters, and to fill that man's 
pocket; and the inference is plain that quite another 
hand than Shaksper' s wrote them. 

Charles Lamb, ^'On the Tragedies of Shakespeare", 
says: "The truth is, the characters of Shakespeare are 
so much 'the objects of meditation rather than of inter- 



148 SHAKSPE^R NO¥ SHAKEiSPElARE;. 

est or curiosity as to their actions, that while we are 
reading any of his great original characters — Macbeth, 
Richard, even lago — we think not so much of the 
crimes they commit, as of the ambition, the aspiring 
spirit, the intellectual activity, which prompt them to 
leap over these moral fences. So little do the actions 
comparatively affect us, that while the impulses, the 
inner mind in all its perverted greatness, solely seems 
real and is exclusively attended to, the crime is com- 
paratively nothing. But when we see these things 
represented, the acts which they do are compara- 
tively everything, their impulses nothing. 
The too close pressing semblance of reality (in acting) 
gives a pain and an uneasiness which totally destroys 
all the delight which the words in the book convey, 
where the deed doing never presses upon us with the 
painful sense of presence; it seems rather to belong to 
history — to something past and inevitable, if it has 
anything to do with time at all. The sublime images, 
the poetry alone, is that which is present to our 
minds in the reading." The concluaion of all of 
which is, that these plays were meant for the closet 
rather than the stage, for reading rather than for 
acting. 

Again, Lamb says: "I cannot help being of opinion 
that the plays of Shakespeare are less calculated for 
performance on a stage than of almost any other 
dramatist whatever. Their distinguishing excellence 
is a reason that they should be so. There is so much 
in them which comes not under the provision of act- 
ing, with which eye, and tone, and gesture have noth- 
ing to do." And; "lycar is essentially impossible to 



the: THi^ATEIRS IN I^ONDON. 1 49 

be represented on a stage. . . . Tlie I^ear of 
Shakespeare cannot be acted. The contemptible ma- 
chinery by which they mimic the storm which he goes 
out in is not more inadequate to represent the horrors 
of the real elements, than any actor can be to repre- 
sent I^ear. . . . The play is beyond all art, as the 
tamperings with it show ; it is too hard and stony; it 
must have love scenes and a happy ending. It is not 
enough that Cordelia is a daughter, she must shine as 
a lover too. Tate has put his hook in the nostrils of 
this lycviathan, for Garrick and his followers, the 
showmen of scene, to draw the mighty beast about 
more easily. ' ' 

Tennyson has left us his opinion that "lycar can- 
not possibly be acted; it is too titanic. . . . 
No play — not even the Agamemnon— is so terrifically 
human". 

GoUancz says: "For more than a century and a 
half, Tate's perversion of L^ear held the stage. It was 
to this acting edition that L^amb referred in his 
famous criticism. Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and other 
great actors were quite content with this travesty, but 
the lycar of Shakespeare cannot be acted." Charles 
Knight says of another of these plays: "The feeling 
which the study of Shakespeare' s Troilus and Cressida 
slowly but certainly calls forth, is that of almost pros- 
tration before the marvelous intellect which has pro- 
duced it. But this is the result of study, as we have 
said. The play cmmot be understood upon a superficial 
reading: it is full of the most subtle art. We may set 
aside particular passages, and admire their eloquence — 
their profound wisdom : but it is long before the play as 



I50 shakspe;r not SHAKE;sp:^AR:e. 

a whole, obtains its proper mastery over the understand- 
ing y And yet, these plays, entirely over the heads 
of the theater goers of any stage of the 1 6th century, 
and nearly as much so to-day, are supposed to have 
been expressly written for the entertainment of the 
rabble of London, just emerging from barbarism, and 
thrown off merely as pot-boilers by a tramp player. 

There is no evidence that William Shaksper ever 
received one penny royalty on a Shakespeare play, or 
any other play. There is no evidence that he ever 
possessed a property in any Shakespeare or other 
play; and when he died, no Shakespeare, or other 
play, was found among his personal effects; nor was 
there mention of anything of the kind, or of any literary 
matter whatever in his last Will. These plays were 
entered on the Stationers' Register, not in the name 
of one publisher, but of nearly as many publishers as 
there were different plays. Most of them in their 
successive editions appeared without an author's name, 
or one edition of a given play would be anonymous, 
and the next not. Ten years after William Shaksper 
is supposed to have begun to write plays, a publisher 
used the name of "William Shakespeare" on a title 
page, prompted to do so, I believe, by the extraor- 
dinary success of certain poems which had borne the 
sobriquet of "William Shake- speare", and after that, 
some of this series of plays bore that name, while 
others did not, but issued anonymously. As I have 
before said, the first appearance of a Shakespeare 
play was usually on the occasion of some grand fes- 
tivity at Court or elsewhere, and then in a quite dif- 
ferent form from the same play when it came to be 



THK THKATi^E-S IN I^ONDON. I51 

printed. No doubt the manager of the Curtain or the 
Globe was at liberty (purchased from the publishers 
or not) to adopt such scenes from these or any other 
printed plays, as would suit the people who looked to 
him for entertainment. He was not the man to work 
for nothing, to write a play of ten thousand words for 
private reading, when one thousand words were all he 
could use, or wanted for his public theater. This man 
had a mission to perform — so Wendell tells us, and he 
knows — to make a fortune, and he accomplished it. 
All his life he worked to that end, and what did not 
tend to that end was not done by him. 

Even at the present day, no one of the Shakespeare 
plays is put upon the stage as it left its author' s hand, 
but all have been altered and abridged according to 
the whims of successive generations of actors and 
editors. With the attractions of artistic scenery, 
trained and accomplished actors, beautiful and su- 
perbly costumed actresses, and music, it is hard to 
make an abbreviated Shakespeare play attract the 
town for a week together; and most of the audience 
go, not to hear the words and wisdom of Shakespeare, 
but to see the beauty and fashion in the boxes, or the 
splendid pageant on the stage. That is what most 
people nowadays go to the representation of a Shake- 
speare play for.* 

*After the above lines were written, I read in Munsey's Maga- 
zine for May, 1S96: "During one week in Marcli, there were 
three productions of Shakespeare plays at as many Broadway 
houses. By many this might be hailed as a happy antidote to 
the rage for vaudevilles. As a matter of fact, all three presenta- 
tions were merely the realization of cherished personal ambitions 



152 shakspe;r not shake;spe;ar:^. 

A small minority, consisting of reading and culti- 
vated persons, really go for better reasons. But how- 
many would go if there were no beauty and fashion, 
no ladies unless masked, no scenery, and if the female 
characters were personated (or travestied) by men and 
boys? How many, if the performance took place be- 
neath the open sky, and under the barbarous condi- 
tions which prevailed in the time of Elizabeth ? Not 
one; and it is absurd to suppose that the public, whom 
Johnson characterized as gross and dark, and especially 
the lower class of people, who, according to the same 
authority, were but just emerging from barbarism, 

on the part of star performers. By tradition Shakespeare is re- 
garded as the top round of the mummer's ladder. To be sure, 
if the Bard of Avon should appear on Gotham's Rialto with the 
manuscript of Julius Caesar, or Romeo and Juliet, in his pocket, 
he would find just as hard a row to hoe, in securing a staging, as 
does Skaggs of Skeneateles, with his 'Sixteen Wives to a Hus- 
band', of more modern make. The managers. . . . know 
that Shakespeare does not pay unless he is well sugar-coated 
with unequaled scenic effect, and even then it is touch and go 
if you ever get your money back." And in Book News, for 
May, 1896, I read this: "It is that part of the theater-going 
public which is respectable and absolutely commonplace that 
Mr. Daly appeals to. . . . This is what Mr. Daly applies to 
Shakespeare. He first cuts out every frank phrase in the play, 
then every scene that is not rapid and spicy, then he upholsters 
it, and then he turns loose on it his troupe of society actors. 
He knows his world." Showman Shaksper knew his world 
also, and was not such a fool as to present a Shakespeare play 
as written to the audiences of the Curtain. 

Fleay, Hist., 169, says: "I am sure that no popular audience 
(in our day) would be attracted by Shakespeare's poetry, or 
Irving's acting, were it not for the siibsidiary aids of scenery, 
upholstery, splendid dress and euphonious melody. ' ' 



TH:e TPIEATBRS IN I^ONDON. 1 53 

could have been attracted by these plays, in the shape 
in which we have them, at the public theater, in 1590 
or later.* 

There is scarcely any description extant of the per- 
formance of a possible Shakespeare play at the theater 
between 1587 and 1623 — anything beyond the bare 
title of a play, and then, as I have said, there is never 
coupled with it the name of Shakespeare. What 
there is, is chiefly contained in the note-book of 
Dr. Simon Forman, an astrologer of that period. 
Mr. Phillipps, II, 87, says: "In the Ashmole col- 
lection of manucripts is a little tract, in the autograph 
of Dr. Simon Forman, giving his accounts of the rep- 
resentation of three of the Shakespeare plays, namely, 
The Winter's Tale, at the Globe, 15 May, 161 1; Cym- 
beline (time and place not given), and Macbeth, at 
the Globe, 20 April, 1610." That these were Shake- 
speare's plays is Mr. Phillipps' assertion, but Forman 
nowhere says they were. Of Macbeth, H.-P. says, I, 
230, "that it is the only contemporary notice that has 
been discovered." Besides the accounts of Forman, 
there is a brief outline of the plot of Twelfth Night, 
perhaps the Shakespeare play of that name, perhaps 

"*Dr. Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare's Works, 1765, says: 
"The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet strug- 
gling to emerge from barbarity. . . . I^iterature was yet 
confined to professed scholars or to men and women of high 
rank. The public was gross and dark." 

. He also tells us that if such plays as those of Shakespeare 
were written in 1765, the audience would not sit them out, thus: 
"He has scenes of undoubted excellence, but perhaps not one 
play which, if it were now exhibited as the work of a contem- 
porary writer, would be heard to the conclusion," 



154 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. 

not, played at the Middle Temple, by John Mannings 
ham, occupying but four lines in Mr. Phillipps' book; 
and that is all that any of the writers during thirty 
odd years gave of the representation of a play which 
might have been a Shakespeare play. This is a re- 
markable state of things. Shakespeare plays per- 
formed at William Shaksper' s theaters for thirty years, 
written expressly to fill his theaters and his pockets, 
as Shakspereans say — the talk of the town — a new 
play the event of the season — so Halli well- Phillipps 
says, and not the slightest testimony has reached this 
age, that any educated man, any man of letters, any 
man eminent in any department of knowledge, or even 
any man belonging to the upper classes, ever went to 
see a Shakespeare play, not merely at a public theater, 
but at a private one, or at court. The quack ("char- 
latan", Fleay calls him), Simon Forman, saw three 
plays with names like those of certain Shakespeare 
plays in some sort of presentation, and John Manning- 
ham records in his diary in the briefest manner that a 
play called Twelfth Night was had at "our feast". 
He does not say that it was a Shakespeare play; but it 
was "near to that in Italian called Inganni"; and for 
aught that appears it may not have been a Shakespeare 
play. That is all, and there is no record of any other 
man, high or low, having witnessed any of them, any- 
where or at any time. If such plays were performed 
with the effect Halliwell-Phillipps asserts, they should 
have been mentioned in private correspondence, in 
diaries, in pamphlets or books. It was an age of 
diaries; and long letters filled with the gossip of the 
town, and the latest news, public and private, went 



THS THKATEJRS OF LONDON. 1 55 

from London to all quarters of the kingdom, serving 
tlie purpose of newspapers, whicli were invented only 
at the close of the 17th century. Later in that cen- 
tury, these plays are repeatedly mentioned in diaries or 
books, and criticisms of bo1;h play and actors are re- 
corded at length. This makes it the more remarkable, 
that the Shakespeare plays, having had the popularity 
claimed for them by modern Shakspereans, should not 
have been mentioned at all in either diary or corre- 
spondence contemporary with the career of William 
Shaksper; — Ingleby and Furnivall are witness to the 
fact. One would suppose that a series of Shakespeare 
plays anywhere would have attracted some one else 
than the rabble of London. As Ingleby says: "The 
absence of sundry great names, with which no pains 
of research could connect the most trivial allusions, 
is tacitly significant." 

The significance consists in this, that it is evident 
that scholars and poets and philosophers, and, in gen- 
eral, literary men, did not go to see these plays in the 
public theaters,* (there is no existing evidence that a 

* Morgan, 147: "At the same time that Bacon and Shake- 
speare are living, unknown to each other respectively, in Lon- 
don, there also dwelt three other gentlemen — Sir Walter Raleigh, 
Edmund Spenser, and Sir Tobie Matthew. We, therefore, actu- 
ally have four well-known gentlemen of the day in London, 
gentlemen of elegant tastes, poets, men about town, critics, 
who, if the town were being convulsed by the production at a 
theater of by far the most brilliant miracles of genius that the 
world has ever seen, ought not in the nature of things, to have 
been utterly misinformed as to the circumstances. The four 
have left precisely such memoranda of their time as are of as- 
sistance to us here. Bacon, in his Apothegms. Spenser in his 



156 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPKARE). 

Shakespeare play was performed in a private theater 
during WilHam Shaksper's career), and if any such 
persons saw one of them at Court, he did not deem it 
of enough importance to speak of it in a letter, or to 
note it down in his diary. If the Shakespeare plays 
were seen at a theater at all, it was before an audience 
illiterate, ' 'gross and dark' ' , and the presentation was 
necessarily of a character to suit and please that sort 
of audience. 

To return to Forman' s account of Macbeth : ' 'There 
was to be observed, first, how Mackbeth and Bancko 
ridinge throwe a wood" (that is, they appeared on 
the stage when the curtain was raised [if there was a 
curtain] mounted on wooden horses, for as Phillipps 
tells us, II, 259, rude models of horses, the bodies 
dilated with hoops and laths, were familiar objects on 
the early English stage), "there stode before him 
three women feiries or nimphes" (the weird sisters 
were personated by men whose heads were disfigured 
by grotesque periwigs, H.-P., 1. c). "And when 

poems, and Raleigh and Matthew in their remains — appear to 
have stumbled on no trace of such a character as 'Shake- 
speare ' in all their sauntering about London. Especially on 
one occasion does Sir Tobie devote himself to a subject matter, 
wherein, if there had been any Shakespeare in ken, he would, 
we think, very naturally have mentioned him. In the Address 
to the Reader, prefixed to one of his works, he says, speaking 
of his own date: 'I doubt if it will go near to pass any other 
nations of Europe to muster out in any age four men, who, in 
so many respects should be able to excel four such as we are 
able to show — Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip 
Sidney, and Sir Francis Bacon. For they were all a kind of 
monsters in their various ways", etc. 



Th:^ THKATSRS in LONDON. 1 57 

Mackbeth had murdred the kinge, the blod on his 
hands could not be washed off by any means, nor 
from his wifes hands which handled the bluddi dag- 
gers. . . . The murder being known Dunkins 
two sons fled. Then Mackbeth, for fear of Bancko, 
caused him to be murdered on the way as he rode" 
(on the wooden horse). "The ghoste of Banco came 
and sat down in the chair behind him. And he, 
turning about to sit down again, sawe the ghoste of 
Banco, which fronted him so, that he fell into a great 
passion of fear and fury, uttering many words about 
his murder. . .. Then Mac Dove fled to Eng- 
land. ... In the mean tyme Mackbeth slew 
Mc Doves wife and children, and after the battelle 
Mac Dove slew Mackbet. Mackbetes wife did rise 
in the night in her slepe, and walked and talked and 
confessed all". 

There is nothing in this account implying that the 
performance was more than a pantomime, with here 
and there an explanatory word thrown in, what Fleay 
styles a dumb -show, and which was very popular. 
We hear of the action only, and rapid action, and it 
all took place in the brief afternoon, on the bare stage, 
one thing succeeding another in plain view of the 
crowd. The wooden horse stood there at the begin- 
ning, and Macbeth and Banquo must have dismounted, 
while the beast remained for Banquo to mount again, 
in order that he might be cut down as he rode. We 
can see it all — the three ' 'nimphes' ' , the arrival at Dun- 
can' s court — a placard on the wall to explain that this 
was the article; Duncan coming to Macbeth' s castle 
(another placard) ; the murder of Duncan and of the 



I5S SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPEIARR. 

guards; the bloody daggers, aud I^ady Macbeth, in 
her sleep, walking and talking; the cutting down of 
Banquo; the ghost in the chair; the flight of IMacdufF, 
and the murder of his wife and babes; finalh^ the bat- 
tle and death of Macbeth. Dr. Forman says nothing 
of the speeches or dialogue of the play, the ven,' part 
and the only part, that to-day would be written of by 
an eye-witness of the perfonnance as worth recol- 
lecting. 

''The raven himself is hoarse 
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
Under my battlements. Come yon spirits 
That tend on mortal thoiights, nnsex me here; 
And fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full 
Of direst cruelty". 

"Is this a dagger that I see before me 
The handle toward my hand? " 

"ZNIethought I heard a voice say 'Sleep no more! 
Macbeth hath murdered sleep!' " 

"Infirm of purpose 
Give me the dagger". 

"Thon canst not say I did it, never shake 
Th}- gorj- locks at me. ' ' 

"Avaiint and quit my sight!" 

"Thy bones a*re marrowless, tliy blood is cold, 

Thou hast no speculation in those eyes 

^^^lich thou dost glare with". 

"Here's tlie smell of blood still; all tlie perfimie of 
Arabia viill not sweeten this little hand. " ' 

Nothing of all this. The action of the play was 
evidently what struck Dr. Forman. There can be no 



the; THKATi^RS IN I^ONDON. 1 59 

certainty that the play in question was the Macbeth 
of the Folio. There are omissions in Forman's ac- 
count which are incomprehensible if he was seeing the 
Shakespeare play — as the witch scenes and the incanta- 
tions. He saw "three women fairies or nimphes," 
and nothing more is said of them. So of the appari- 
tions and Birnam wood, there is not a word. 

We may be sure that if it was a Shakespeare play 
the speeches and soliloquies were not given; that the 
dialogues were cut down to what was merely necessary 
to explain the action; and that the action was reduced 
a full half. The audiences were like so many chil- 
dren — cruel children. They wanted no philosophy, 
no metaphysics, no long-drawn speeches — nothing but 
blood. 

Mr. Phillipps has told us that they reveled in the 
horrible, and that murders were in special request. 
They were made up of the scourings of I^ondon, the 
vile, the vicious, and the ignorant; the men and boys 
who used to flock to the hangings and drawings and 
quarterings; and who regretted the good old times 
when there were roastings at the stake. Blood they 
wanted, and in the action of such plays as Macbeth, 
and Titus Andronicus, and Henry VI, they got their 
fill of it. How they yelled as Duncan and the guards 
were stabbed, and the imitation blood ran in quarts; 
as Banquo tumbled from the wooden horse, at the 
shrieks of I^ady Macduff and the children; at the 
final battle! 

In the same way Dr. Forman gives the bare action 
of Cymbeline and the Winter's Tale: "Remember also 
the storri of Cymbelin, King of England in I^ucius 



l6o SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPKARK. 

tyme; how Lucius came from Octavus Cesar for 
tribut, and being denied, after sent lyucius with a 
grate armi of soldiars, who landed at Milford Haven, 
and affter wer vanquished by Cimbalin, and Lucius 
taken prisoner; and all by means of three outlawes; of 
the which two of them were the sonns of Cimbalin, 
stolen from him when they were but two years old by 
an old man whom Cimbalin banished, and he kept 
them as his own sonns twenty years with him in a 
cave; and how one of them slew Cloten, that was the 
quens sonn going to Milford Haven to sek the love 
of Imogen, the Kinges daughter, whom he had ban- 
ished also for lovinge his daughter; and how the 
Italian that cam from her love conveied himself into a 
cheste, and said jt was a chest of plate sent from her love 
and others to be presented to the Kinge; and in the deep- 
est of the night, she being aslepe, he opened the cheste, 
and came forth of yt, and viewed her in her bed, and 
the marks of her body, and toke away her braslet and 
after accusing her of adultery to her love, etc. , and in 
til' end how he came with the Romains into England; 
and was taken prisoner, and after reveled to Imogen, 
who had turned herself into man's apparell, and fled 
to mete her love at Milford Haven and chancsed to fall 
on the cave in the woods wher her two brothers were; 
and how by eating a sleeping dram, they thought she 
had been deed, and laid her in the wodes, and body of 
Cloten by her in her loves apparell that he left be- 
hind him; and how she was found by Lucius," etc. 
Here is no hint of speeches or dialogue, nothing but 
action, and suitable to a Dumb-Show. The story of 
the Winter' s Tale is described in the same way. These 



THE THEATKRS IN I^ONDON. l6l 

narratives sustain the view that the Shakespeare plays 
were not performed at the pubHc theaters, but skele- 
tons, or special scenes from them only; and those, it 
is highly probable, most often in pantomime. 

Both Fleay and Knight tell us that dumb-shows, a 
new style of playing introduced from Italy, were very 
popular in the last years of the century. And Ham- 
let, in 1603, implies the same thing. The action of a 
dumb-show or a spectacular scene, if there were blood 
enough, would attract an audience to fill the diminu- 
tive theater; but it is not to be believed, and cajinot be 
proved, that the Shakespeare plays were ever performed 
at length or were anywhere popular. Mr. Phillipps 
would have us believe that a new Shakespeare play 
was the event of the year (1592) and that the town 
was in a furore over it, but when we search for the 
proofs of this, they are remarkable for their absence. 
He tells us that Henry VI (meaning Shakespeare's) 
was the success of the year — visited by ten thousand 
persons, and refers to Nash as his authority. Nash 
says (Ingleby, 5): "How it would have joyed brave 
Talbot to think that after he had lain two hundred 
years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the 
stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the 
tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several 
times)," etc. On this, Ingleby says that "the play 
in question may or may not be identical with the first 
part of Henry VI of the Folio of 1623"; and anyhow 
"whether Shakespeare had any hand in this latter 
play is to . say the least problematical. ' ' According 
to Ingleby, therefore, Phillipps was not justified in 
citing- Nash as witness to the popularity of a Shake- 



l62 SHAKSPICR NOT SHAKKSPEARE. 

speare play, for the probabilities are that the play was 
not a Shakespeare play. As we have before seen, 
later commentators of distinction are agreed that ist 
Henry VI was written in collaboration by Marlowe, 
Peele, Lodge, and either Greene and Kyd. Fleay, 
273, is of opinion that about 1588-9 Marlowe plotted, 
and in conjunction with the playwrights named, wrote 
ist Henry VI for the Queen's men. In 1591-2, the 
Queen's men sold the play with others to Lord 
Strange' s men (with whom was William Shaksper), 
who produced it in 1592, with the Talbot additions 
made by some other playwright. He thinks this other 
was "Shakespeare", but that is merely a name for an 
author unknown. The point is that Phillipps' claim 
to the popularity of a new Shakespeare play, mean- 
ing a play written by his bard, William Shaksper, is 
not supported by his citation of Marlowe's play of ist 
Henry VI. 

Mr. Phillipps uses nearly the same expressions as to 
Romeo and Juliet, "which was produced at the Curtain 
Theater, 1596, and met with great success. Romeo 
and Juliet may be said indeed to have taken the me- 
tropolis by storm and to have become the play of the 
season. . . . The long continued popularity of 
Romeo and Juliet may be inferred from several earlier 
allusions, as well as from the express testimony of 
Leonard Digges." Vol. I, 128. As Digges was 
born in 1688, he was but eight years old when this 
play was ' 'first produced' ' ! 

On turning to Ingleby, 154, to see what Digges really 
said (in his verses prefixed to the Folio, 1623, twenty- 



THK THKATKRS IN I^ONDON. 1 63 

seven years after Romeo and Juliet was first produced, ) 
we find simply these words: 

"Nor shall I e'er believe or think thee dead 
(Though mist) until our bankrout stage be sped 
(Impossible) with some new strain to out-do 
Passions of Juliet and her Romeo". 

There is not another line in Phillipps which shows 
that Romeo and Juliet was played after this first pro- 
duction, and even that production seems a mere 
inference from something quoted from Marston's 
"Scourge of Villanie", 1598. One of the characters 
is made to say: 

"Luscus what's played to-day? faith now I know 
I set thy lips abroach, from whence doth flow 
Naught but pure Juliet and Romeo." 

Marston used the expression "Curtaine plaudeties" 
in this connection, which as appears from Phillipps, I, 
366, may have meant the play-house, or, on the other 
hand, it may have been meant for theatrical. Then 
Phillipps goes on: ^'If the supposition that Marston 
speaks of the Curtain theater is correct, it is certain that 
Shakespeare' s tragedy of Romeo a7td Juliet was there 
plaid publiquely by the Right Honorable the L. of 
Hunsdon his servants, title page of edition 1597. . . . 
It 7nay be then safely assumed that Shakespeare's Romeo 
and Juliet was acted at the Curtain theater some time 
between July 22, 1 596, the day on which Lord Hunsdon 
died, and April 17, 1597, when his son was appointed 
to the office of Privy Council Register. During those 
nine months the company was known as lyord Huns- 



164 shakspe;r Nor shakkspkare;. 

don's". The above is an excellent example of Mr. 
Phillipps' logic. 

"The first production" spoken of, on p. 128, seems 
to be the same as that on p. 366. Phillipps nowhere 
else speaks of any performance, though, I, 405, he 
quotes the title page of the edition of 1597: "An ex- 
cellent conceited tragedie of Romeo and Juliet as it 
hath been often (with great applause) plaid pub- 
liquely", etc., as I have before given it. The title 
page of the 2d Quarto, 1599, says: "Newly corrected, 
augmented, and amended; as it hath bene sundry times 
publiquely acted by the right H. the ly. Chamberlain's 
servants." Nowhere is there direct evidence that 
this play was performed at one of the public theaters; 
and, as I have elsewhere shown, it was impossible 
that a Shakespeare play could have been so performed, 
except greatly abbreviated. 

On looking up the "several early allusions", spoken 
of by Phillipps, they are limited to this one of Mars- 
ton's, and Weever's mention by name of the issue of 
"honie-tongued Shakespeare", in his Epigrams of 
1595, where the compound word "Romea-Richard" 
appears, and nothing else. There is no such play as 
Romea-Richard, and what the first part of the name 
means is not apparent. If, in 1595, there was a play 
known as Romea, meaning Romeo, then its first pro- 
duction would not seem to have been in 1596, and 
Romeo must have been the older play spoken of by 
Fleay. On the strength of these two trivial, and one 
of them doubtful, allusions, away goes Phillipps, dis- 
coursing of "the long continued popularity of Romeo 
and Juliet"; and of its "taking the metropolis by 



I^HK THBlAT'EiRS IN IvONDON. 1 65 

storm"; "the success of the season"; an excellent 
example of his habit when he fires up on the subject 
of "the bard of our admiration", or "the great drama- 
tist", always meaning the strolling player, William 
ShakvSper. Every testimony to the popularity of a 
Shakespeare play wdll be found to peter out in like 
fashion. One remark further from Phillipps on this 
play of Romeo and Juliet I must give (I, 128): "But 
it is rather singular that the author's name is not 
mentioned in any of the old editions, until some time 
after the year 1609." On this I quote T. "W. White, 
127: "Some time after 1609, a fourth quarto edition 
(of Romeo and Juliet) was published without any 
date, but with the name of William Shakespeare as 
author. But what happened? After a few copies 
had been sold, Shakespeare's name was withdrawn, 
and the rest of the impression was issued anony- 
mously. ' ' (New Shakespeare Soc. II. Daniel's Romeo 
and Juliet, I^ondon, 1874, Intro., IV.) 

This play was never attributed to William Shake- 
speare, except on the few copies spoken of, until the 
Folio appeared, 1623. Mr. White believes that the 
withdrawal of Shakespeare's name on the title page 
of this fourth Quarto was caused by a legal proceeding 
had or threatened.* 



* T. W. White says : ' 'There is direct evidence that Romeo 
and Juliet was written by Samuel Daniel in the Pilgrimage to 
Parnassus. Gallic, having given a certain passage as his own, 
Ingenioso exclaims: 'Mark! I think he will run through a 
whole book of Samuel Daniel'. If the words mean anjrthing, 
they mean that Samuel Daniel was known as the author of 
Romeo and Juliet.,' ' 



i66 SHAKSiPER NOO* SHAKESPEAREI, 

Even at Court, between 1589, when Fleay says the 
first Shakespeare play was given (lyOve's Labour's 
Lost), and 16 10, when Shaksper retired from the com- 
pany of players, there were but 88 performances of 
any sort by himself and associates — 88 performances 
in twenty years. Some of the plays may have been 
Shakespeare plays; others doubtless bore similar names 
to the Shakespeare plays, but were written by earlier 
authors. Others of the eighty -eight, were by Jonson 
and different playwrights. We know this because 
Mr. Fleay records several such by name, as played be- 
fore the Court by the Chamberlain's Company, or the 
King's Company. In the Appendix to his book (Life) 
is a list of all performances by the Shaksper companies 
before the Court during the period named, year by 
year; and four or five at other places, as Gray's Inn, 
Somerset House, etc., etc. Therefore, we are war- 
ranted in asserting that the Shakespeare plays between 
1589 and 1 6 10 were not performed before the Court on 
an average of more than twice a year. 

At these Court performances any Shakespeare play 
must have been cut down to an hour or so. As in 
the city theaters, there was no movable scenery, and 
there were no actresses. The fashionable set about 
the Queen, or James, would soon tire of the declama- 
tions and rantings and questionable jokes of fellows 
that they held in the same consideration as jugglers 
and buffoons, and whose very utterance and movement 
they spent their wit in audibly ridiculing. "The 
queen patronized the players, but it was only as she 
patronized the bulls, bears and apes, which were baited 
for her amusement". T. W. White, 283. In the 



^un THE^Al^KRS IN LONDON. 1 67 

same way the players were baited for her amusement, 
to the delight of the courtiers. 

And here I would remark, that the Court seems to 
have appreciated five-act plays and Shakespeare plays 
vastly less than did the rabble at the public theaters, 
if we are to believe what the commentators tell us. 
Interludes and dumb-shows were played in the theaters 
up to 1589, and the shows had become popular. In 
steps an inspired butcher with his five-act play of 
lyove's I^abour 's Lost, a supreme effort in genteel com- 
edy, and the groundlings are so enamored with the 
poetry and pictures of high life (in southern France, 
of all places in the world!) with the abundant Latin 
and French, with the discourses on philology, divinity, 
and law, that they cry aloud for five-act plays; they 
cry for them as children cry for castoria, with the re- 
sult that, up to 1592, they get four more plays to their 
mind — Much Ado About Nothing, The Comedy of 
Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo and Juliet — 
the scenes laid in Italy and Sicily and Asia; Dukes, 
Princes, Lords and Ladies galore. All this they got 
because they cried (conclamabant) for it. Happy, 
happy groundlings! One distinguished member of the 
American Shakespeare Society has it in print that the 
Shakespeare plays are the direct outcome of the clamor 
of the galleries, and but for this, there would have 
been no Shakespeare plays. Now Sympnds tells us 
that the occupants of the gallery were the same sort 
as the stinkards below, plus the prostitutes. 

On the other hand, while the intellectual and culti- 
vated penny-knaves were clamoring for five-act plays, 
the unintellectual and uncultivated Court, from 1586 



1 68 SHAKSPSR NOT shak:^sp:^are. 

to 1592, was content with Interludes, Masks, and the 
the gambols of the Children of the Revels. Truly the 
contrast is surprising! I remember that Fleay charges 
certain Shakespeare commentators with having mis- 
chievously fertile imaginations, and also that an em- 
inent authority long ago left her opinion that this 
world was too much given to lying. 

After 1623, when the reading community had the 
opportunity to become acquainted with the whole body 
of Shakespeare plays, through the Folio, these should 
have become popular. But it was not so. Dr. Ingle- 
by, 157, quoting Malone says: "The ofl&ce book of 
Sir Henry Herbert contains an account of almost 
every piece exhibited in any of the theaters from 
August, 1623, to the commencement of the rebellion, 
1 65 1. By this it appears that the Winter's Tale was 
acted at Whitehall, i8th of Jan., 1623; Sir John 
Falstaff (Henry IV), at same place, 1624; Richard III, 
at St. James, 1633; The Taming of A Shrew, St. 
James, 1633; Cymbeline (at Court), 1633; ^^^ Win- 
ter's Tale, at Court, 1633; and Julius Caesar, at St. 
James, 1636. That is to say, from the publication of 
the Folio, in the next eighteen years, seven repre- 
sentations of Shakespeare plays, or plays with titles 
similar to those of the Shakespeare plays — for the 
record never says "by Shakespeare" — ^were given be- 
fore the rank and fashion of the land, or about one 
every three years. 

After the Restoration, we hear of I^ear and Macbeth, 
as altered by Davenant; Troilus and Cressida, as re- 
written by Dryden; "The Tempest, made into an 
opera by Mr. Shadwell, having all new in it, as scenes, 



YHB^ 1'H:eA'rE;RS IN I.ONDON. I69 

machines; particularly one scene painted with myriads 
of Ariel spirits; and another flying away with a table 
furnished out with fruits, sweetmeats, and all sorts of 
viands, just when Duke Trinculo and his companions 
were going to dinner' ' . 

"The Fairy Queen: This is Shakespeare's Mid- 
summers Nights Dream with additions, songs and 
dances, 24 Chinese, and Juno in a machine drawn by 
peacocks. "While a symphony plays, the machine 
moves forward, and the peacocks spread their tails, 
etc. I^ater six monkeys come from behind the trees 
and dance," etc. 

There is no evidence that at any time the Shake- 
speare plays as "William Shakespeare" wrote them 
were popular, that is, capable of filling the theaters or 
the managers' pockets; and yet, after the Restoration, 
the female parts were taken by women, several of 
whom seem to have been admirable actresses, and 
stage scenery had been introduced. Other attractions 
had to be offered. Doran says that (about 1700) "the 
theaters had not proved popular. The public greeted 
acrobats with louder acclaim than any poet. Dancers, 
strong men, and quadrupeds were called in to attract 
the town." "At a performance of Othello, between 
the acts, Dutch posture- masters kept the audience in 
good humor' ' . 

Ingleby goes on to say: "But Sir Henry Herbert 
left several other papers, from which Malone gives us 
the following notices of Shakespeare plays. Out of 
the twenty stock plays of the Red Bull actors, after- 
wards called the King's servants, from 1660 to 1663, 
three were Shakespeare's. Out of a list of 67 entered 



lyo shaksper NOT' shake;spe;are;. 

by Sir Henry Herbert, from 5 March., 1660, to July 
23d, 1662, only three were Shakespeare's. Downes, 
the prompter's, list of the stock plays of the King's 
servants from 1660 to 1682, gives only four of Shake- 
speare's. Davenant's company acted some of Shake- 
speare's, part of which had been altered. The notes 
for the next thirty years show us ten of Shakespeare's 
own, and ten altered by various writers, which were 
performed before 1692". The public quickly forgot 
Shakespeare and accepted Davenant, and Dry den, 
Tate, Durfey, Gibber, and John Philip Kemble, as 
something better than the original, and even then, one 
of these plays was seldom performed. 

The summing up of the matter is this: William 
Shaksper belonged to a company of players which was 
called in successive periods by several names — at 
length, after 1603, the King's players. It was their 
duty to amuse the Court when ordered so to do. This 
Company, under one name or other, had occupied 
three public theaters, the then lowest place of public 
entertainment; first, the Theater; next, the Curtain; 
and, finally, the Globe; and they played in no other 
theaters. They were in the habit of giving perform- 
ances in the open air anywhere about town where a 
crowd could be collected, just as tumblers and jugglers 
perform now in I^ondon streets. Sometimes they 
played on an extemporized platform — "boards and 
barrel heads" — in the open court or yard of one of the 
London Inns. The larger part of the year they 
strolled up and down Bngland and Scotland divided 
into small squads, and played at fairs or wherever they 
happened to be. 



YHE^ 'I'HKAYEiRS IN tONDON. 17I 

There is no possibility that any Shakespeare play 
was ever acted at length while the detachments were 
thus strolhng; * a separate scene might have been, but 
as to whether even that was given there is no informa- 
tion. There is no evidence or probability that any 
Shakespeare play was ever acted at a public theater, 
except in a very brief form, a mere skeleton, or inter- 
lude, or in dumb-show. The nature of the public 
theater prohibited anything beyond this. There is no 
evidence whatever that a Shakespeare play was ever 
acted by William Shaksper's Company, or any other 
Company, at a private theater. There is a record of 
four or five performances of some sort of play at the 
Karl of Pembroke's, Gray's Inn, or the like, in the 
years during which William Shaksper was a player or 
manager (Rowland White, in one of his letters given 
in the Sydney Memoirs, II, 91, says that on 14 Febru- 
ary, 1898, there was a grand entertainment given at 
the Essex House. "They had two plays, which kept 
them up till one o'clock after midnight"); and of an 
average of about two and a half performances per 

■•■■ Fleay, Life, 229, says: "On the title-page of the ist Quarto 
(Hamlet, 1603), it is said that the play has been acted in the 
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and elsewhere. . . . 
Hamlet was entered by Roberts, 26 July, 1602, in S. R., 'as it 
was lately acted'. Plays thus produced during travels were 
hurried and careless performances; indeed, this form of Hamlet 
seems to have been an unfinished refashioning of the old play 
by Kyd that had long been performed by the Chamberlain's 
men." On page 233, Fleay speaks of this ist Quarto as " a hur- 
ried revision of the work of an earlier writer, but it must be 
remembered, in a most mutilated form. " This "most mutilated 
form" would be "as it was acted", etc. 



172 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. 

year at Court during the same period. There is no 
reason for believing that even at Court any Shakespeare 
play was ever acted at length, or otherwise than in a 
very much abbreviated form; and, indeed, we are ex- 
pressly told this was the case. 

There is no evidence that these plays were any- 
where popular, either among cultivated people or the 
rabble, the "groundlings" of Hamlet, the "penny- 
knaves" as Ingleby calls them, the "stinkards" of 
Symonds, who flocked to the Globe, though certain 
scenes of them were very probably popular, such as, 
from their brutality, carnage or ribaldry, were on a 
moral level with that audience. 

I shall in due time show (Chaps. XI, XII), that 
during the period from 1589 to 1623, these plays were 
wholly unappreciated even by the better class of peo- 
ple, by the educated, and that they were regarded as 
in no whit superior to the plays written by a score of 
other authors. 

Finally, the assertion that they were written to fill 
the public theaters and the pockets of William Shaksper, 
their alleged author, through the money they brought 
to the theater, is unwarranted. As I have said before, 
a course of Shakespeare plays would have bankrupted 
any theater. No audience would have sat them out, 
and the pit at the Curtain or the Globe would have 
pelted the players, or given them a hiding, had such, 
a thing been attempted by the managers. 

Now that we have seen what the theater was, and 
what the audience, and what sort of men those licensed 
vagabonds must have been, we can judge of the proba- 
bility of the most poetical head in England, "the 







td 

o 
o 

p 






> 

w 
o 




3 






i-i 

















CA 



THE) THBJATEJRS IN I^ONDON. 1 73 

greatest poet of tlie modern world", as Professor 
Symonds styles him, the "fullest head of which we 
have any record' ' , according to James Russell I^owell, 
the ' ' myriad-minded ' ' author of the Shakespeare 
plays, as Coleridge calls him, taking up his abode and 
remaining for twenty-five years with that disgusting 
crowd. William Shaksper could and did do that 
thing, but the author of the immortal plays could not 
have done it, and he did not do it. Can any one im- 
agine a heaven-born poet deliberately taking up his 
abode, and contentedly living the remainder of his 
days, with Snug the joiner. Bottom the weaver, and 
Snout the tinker ? — and those particular worthies were 
not tainted with every vice, we have reason to believe. 
"Acting" is not the word to describe the beggarly 
performances given by the Curtain company, or the 
Globe company, either at the Theater or on the tramp. 
They were players, not actors. Jonson intimates that 
their proper place was at Goose Fair, and he hints 
broadly at the character of the prevalent vices among 
them. Wendell takes pains to tell us that the theater 
was not a socially respectable place, — that it was the 
center of organized vice. And the quotations I have 
given from Phillipps and Symonds bear him out. 

William Shaksper, ex-butcher and poacher, escaped 
to lyondon, under the law that birds of a feather flock 
together, would naturally find his fellows at the public 
theater, and could lose no caste by it. But it is 
utterly impossible that the author of the Shakespeare 
plays, an educated and learned man, as well as a gen- 
tleman, of which the plays themselves give evidence, 
could have sunk into that unclean nest, and volun- 



174 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPEAR:^. 

tarily have spent his hfe among pimps and panders, or 
strolhng about the land "with a blind jade and a 
hamper' ' , cutting his Jim Crow antics, in inn-yards, 
on boards and barrel-heads. 

Even as a player, William Shaksper was a failure. 
Burbage, and Alleyn, and Kempe, his associates, left 
some sort of a reputation to the next age, but of 
Shaksper there is nothing. According to Ro we, "the 
top of his performance was the Ghost in his own 
Hamlet. There is some ground for thinking' ' (indefi- 
nite knowledge is definite ignorance) "that he played 
the part of Knowell in Jonson's Every Man in his 
Humour"; and there is a confused tradition handed 
down by William Oldys (i 696-1761), antiquarian, 
which makes it probable that he was the Adam of "As 
You lyike It". Dowden, 19. R. G. White says, 
Appleton's Enc. "Shakespeare": "We are tolerably 
well informed by contemporary writers of the per- 
formances of the eminent actors of that time, but 
of Shakespeare (Shaksper) we read nothing." A 
strange fact! No end of evidence of Shaksper' s money 
transactions, but nothing of him as a player — the occu- 
pation in which he spent the best half of his life, in 
contemporary annals. The truth unquestionably is 
that to his contemporaries he was known simply as 
proprietor of a theater, and as a trader' and money 
lender. 

Oldys says that one of William's younger brothers, 
whom he calls Charles, and who lived to a great age, 
when questioned in his later years, said that he could 
remember nothing of William's performances, but see- 
ing him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, 



THK THEATERS IN LONDON. 1 75 

to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, 
and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to 
walk that he was forced to be supported, and carried 
to a table, at which he was seated among some com- 
pany and one of them sang a song. ' ' This is circum- 
stantial enough, and indicates no loss of memory on 
the part of the venerable brother. The wonder is, if 
he could remember so much, and so minutely, that he 
could not have remembered more. Unfortunately, 
William did not have any such older brother, or any 
brother Charles, and that forgery goes with the many 
others. Fleay tells us, 170, (H.-P. I, 238), "that on 
the 4th Feby., 161 3, the poet's only surviving brother, 
Richard, was buried at Stratford. ' ' His memory as a 
player then rests only on what Rowe tells us, but if there 
is only some reason for thinking he played the part of 
old Knowell, there is as much reason for believing he 
did not. Evidently, William Shaksper played inferior 
parts, such as would not impress the spectators. He 
was not known to his contemporaries therefore as a 
player, nor as a writer of plays, but he had a reputa- 
tion which has reached our day as a jack-at-all-trades, 
a manager of a strolling company, and as proprietor 
of a public theater — the lowest, nastiest, place of 
entertainment. But always he was known as a 
man who had money to loan — for a sufficient consid- 
eration. 

And now we can understand why William Shaksper, 
player, manager, and part proprietor of the Globe, 
was unknown to the men of that age; that there is no 
mention of him in any letter, save in one instance 
where a Stratford neighbor writes to him for a loan of 



176 shakspe;r not shakkspearb. 

money; or diary of that age, save one entry in Man- 
ningham's diary, (which makes him party to a dis- 
creditable amour) ; that there is no testimony to con- 
nect him with writing any sort of play; and there is 
not a tittle of evidence that any man or woman of 
mark, or any gentleman or lady, ever spoke to him. 



wii<];iAM shaksp:^r's thirst for we;ai,th. 177 
CHAPTER VIII. 

WILI.IAM SHAKSPER'S THIRST FOR WEAIvTH. 

When I say there are few mentions of the man 
Shaksper, I mean as connected with the theater. 
There are many in other avocations, as buying and 
selling, investing money at Stratford and elsewhere, 
loaning money, and prosecuting debtors. In 1598, 
Adrian Quiney writes to him in London about money, 
and this is the only letter to-day extant addressed to 
the player. "The fact is somewhat startling in the 
life of a great poet that the only letter addressed to 
Shakespeare (Shaksper), which is known to exist, is 
one which asks for a loan of money' ' . R. G. White, 
lyife and Genius, 123. Very significant as well as 
startling, I should say! 

"He appears not only as an advancer of money, but 
also one who negotiates loans through other capital- 
ists". H.-P., I, 164. From the beginning of his 
career in London money was the object of his heart, 
and as Rowe tell us, "by his incessant attention to 
business' ' he attained it in an unusually large degree. 
Wendell, 433, says: "The son of a ruined tradesman, 
and saddled with a wife and three children, his busi- 
ness at 23 was to so conduct his life that he might end 
it not as a laborer, but as a gentleman. After five- 
and-twenty years of steady work, this end had been 
accomplished." Incessant attention to business, and 
twenty-five years of steady work in a player's life, 



178 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPKARE. 

would seem to leave little time for anything outside of 
business. There are unreflecting persons who suppose 
William Shaksper was coining money by the Shake- 
speare plays, instead of by trading, buying and selling 
real estate in London, Stratford, and many other 
places; loaning his money at usurious interest, as the 
books plainly intimate; by farming and brewing beer. 
R. G. White says, Shakespeare Studies, 209: "The 
point to be constantly kept in mind in the critical con- 
sideration of Shakespeare's dramas is, that they were 
written by a second-rate actor (player Shaksper) 
whose first object was money, to get on in life. He 
wrote what he wrote merely to fill the theater and his 
own pockets". I think I have made it clear that had 
this man written the Shakespeare plays in order to fill 
the Theater, or Curtain, or Globe, the only theaters 
with which he was connected, he would have emptied 
instead of filled his own pockets. That theory may as 
well be dismissed. He did not write the Shakespeare 
plays, and his aim in life being what it was, he could 
not have written them, even if he had had the ability 
to do it. The passion for money-making is antago- 
nistic to the passion for study. The two cannot 
exist in the same mind. A man may become 
rich as a result of his passion for literature, but he 
cannot become learned by study, or distinguished in 
literature, when money-making has been his first ob- 
ject. There is no pretense that Shaksper had a 
passion for literature, or cared one stiver for it. "He 
wrote merely to fill his own pockets' ' . Then he never 
wrote the Shakespeare plays. He had an enormous 
capacity for getting money, else he would not have 



WIIvWAM SHAKSPKR'S THIRS']^ FOR WEJAI^TH. 1 79 

accumulated a property that yielded an income equiva- 
lent to twenty-five thousand dollars to-day. His one 
feat was getting money; there is nothing else. He 
saved his earnings from his first months in I^ondon; 
even as a horse boy, he employed other boys to work for 
him, and so gained money. He invested in any good 
thing that came to hand, executed commissions, ne- 
gotiated loans with other capitalists, Phillips says. 
By and by he bought a share in a theater, which 
proved a very profitable investment; bought houses 
and lots in London, houses and lands in Stratford, 
farms here and there; was always trading, even to the 
buying and selling of agricultural products; was en- 
gaged in the making and sale of malt; buys for ^440 
"the unexpired term of the moiety of a valuable lease 
of the tithes of four parishes, to wit: Stratford, Old 
Stratford, Bishop ton, and Welcombe." H.-P., I, 214. 
And all the while he was loaning money at a high rate 
of interest. Everything turned to money in this man's 
hands. He had a wife and children at Stratford, but 
he left them to shift for themselves. His father all 
the last part of his life was in distress for money, but 
the son for years wasted nothing on him. A very 
saving man this! He showed himself an unusually 
capable business man. Some of his admirers have 
been unable to see how he could have become rich 
without the apochryphal aid from Lord Southampton, 
told about by Rowe,at the beginning of the 1 8th century. 
According to Rowe, "there is one instance so singular 
in the magnificence of this patron of Shakespeare's 
that if I had not been assured that the story was 
handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who was 



l8o SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSP^ARK. 

probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should 
not have ventured to have inserted; that my I^ord 
Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds 
to enable him to go through with a purchase which he 
heard he had a mind to"; and H.-P., I, 147, thinks 
this purchase must have been New Place, in 1597; and 
5^et he tells us, p. 131, that this property cost Shak- 
sper but ^60. As early as 1603, Crosse, in Phillipps' 
opinion, referred to Shaksper, when he spoke of 
"these copper-laced gentlemen (who) grow rich, pur- 
chase lands by adulterous plays, and not a few of 
them usurers and extortioners", etc. 

In 1602, he had bought 107 acres of land near 
Stratford. Plainly, he commanded money early in his 
London career, and there was no need of Southamp- 
ton's interposing as a deus ex machina. D'Avenant 
gave out that he was a natural son of Shaksper, and 
was a braggart as well as a blackguard, defiling 
the name as well as the fame of his own mother. 
(Both Phillipps and Fleay assert that there was not 
the least ground for the scandalous story. ) Naturally 
he would make the most of the Southampton chest- 
nut, testifying to the grand society the rich manager 
mixed in. One thousand pounds in 1596 was equal to 
$50,000 to-day. Blizabeth's dissipated nobles had no 
Golconda behind them; nor Pennsylvania oil-wells, 
nor Kaffir circles, nor Klon dikes, to fill their purses, 
and did not play at chuck farthing with thousands of 
pounds. If William Shaksper had been the recipient 
of so princely a gift, all the town would have rung 
with it. These things are not done in a corner. 
There would have been comments on it to suit In- 



WIIwIvIAM SHAKSPER'S thirst FOR WEJAI^TH, l8l 

gleby's book, record of it in the accounts or papers of 
the Karl of Southampton, mentions of it in the written 
gossip of the day. There is not merely a total absence 
of anything of the kind, but a notable lack of mention 
of a connection of any sort between Shaksper and 
Southampton. 

Halliwell-Phillipps, who was obliged to make a case 
to fit the personality of William Shaksper, says, I. 
113: "It should be remembered that his dramas were 
not written for posterity, but as a matter of business 

. . . his task having been to construct out of 
certain given or selected materials successful dramas 
for the audiences of the day. ' ' 

The task of manager Shaksper, as well as of all 
managers of that day, was not ' "to construct successful 
dramas", but to find what would suit his or their au- 
diences from whatever sources they were able, and 
doubtless Shaksper catered to an approving audience. 
But the Shakespeare plays were written with no such 
aim as Mr. Phillipps lays claim to. They were written 
for posterity, and not for the audiences of Elizabeth 
or James, and not merely to fill the authors' pockets, 
and the theaters, public or private. As Goethe said, 
Shakespeare never thought of the stage. Had money 
been the aim the author of these plays would have 
gained but a pittance either by their sale* to the 
theater, or a royalty on their performance. They 
were not popular, they were beyond the understand- 
ing of the people, and appreciation of them was very 
slow even among the reading and educated classes. It 

* From Henslowe's Diary we learn that the price paid by the 
theater to the author for a play varied from ^2 to^7. 



i82 shaksp£;r not shake;spe;arb;. 

is one of the unexplained mysteries that no one seems 
to have had or exercised any ownership of these plays. 
Apparently any printer was at liberty to use them as 
he pleased. There is no evidence that any one ever 
received one penny of royalty on them or any of them. 
They were, so far as appears, cast on the waters, and 
certainly it was not till many days after that they bore 
fruit. 

"The constant thirst that he had for wealth is ex- 
hibited by his early acquisition of houses and lands in 
I^ondon and at Stratford; and the firmness of his grip 
on his accumulations is manifested by the paltry suits 
he brought to recover debts — one being for thirty-five 
shillings and tenpence — after he had come to the en- 
joyment of an income which would now be equal to 
twenty thousand dollars a year." Wilkes', "Shake- 
speare' ' . 

He carried on the business of money lending both 
in lyondon and at Stratford. The records of the courts 
in both places show that he sued his debtors, and got 
judgment against them. It is to be noted that the 
suits are always for small sums. He prosecuted 
Philip Rogers, a Stratford neighbor, for y 1.15,6, due 
for malt sold, and two shillings money loaned; another, 
John Addenbroke, for ^6. for malt. Follows this last 
suit for a couple of years until he gets the defendant 
into prison, whence he is bailed by Horneby. The 
legal proceedings are given in full by Phillipps in both 
these cases. Shaksper keeps a lawyer, one Thomas 
Greene, in his house, {teste Phillipps), and his name 
is appended to each of the processes in the Addenbroke 
suit. 



WII^IvIAM SHAKSPE;r'S thirst FOR WKAI^TH. 1 83 

It is pleasant to know that Addenbroke ran away 
and escaped his tormentor, who however then com- 
menced operations on Horneby. R. G. White says: 
' 'These stories grate upon my f eehngs. . . , The 
pursuit of an impoverished man for the sake of im- 
prisoning him, and depriving him both of the power 
of paying his debts, and supporting himself and his 
family, is an instance in Shakspere's life which it 
requires the utmost allowance and consideration for 
the practice of the time and country to enable us to 
contemplate with equanimity — satisfaction is impossi- 
ble". 

Is it probable that this man was the Shakespeare of 
whom Dr. Drake wrote: "No person can study his 
writings without perceiving that throughout the vast 
range of being, whatever is lovely and harmonious, 
whatever is sweet in expression, or graceful in propor- 
tion, was constantly present to his mind"? Could 
that have been the persecutor of poor debtors, the 
man who kept a lawyer in his house, the rich player 
and theater-proprietor who brought up his daughters 
in ignorance, who neglected his distressed father, and 
forgot his wife when he came to make his Will? 
Drake had some other man in his mind, I think. 
Halliwell-Phillipps says: "Until this date (161 3), the 
personal notices of Shaksper which remain to us ex- 
hibit him as being very attentive to matters of busi- 
ness, rapidly growing in estate, purchasing farms, 
houses, and tithes in Stratford, bringing suits for 
small sums against various persons for malt delivered, 
money loaned, and the like; carrying on agricultural 
pursuits and other kinds of traffic, and executing 



1 84 SHAKSPIIR NOT SHAKESPKARK. 

commissions in I^ondon for his Stratford neighbors. 
The best evidence we can produce exhibits him pay- 
ing more regard to his solid affairs than to his pro- 
fession." 

' 'The four years and a half that intervened between 
the performance of the Tempest" (at Blackfriars the- 
ater, with which William Shaksper had no concern), 
"in 1611, and the author's death (161 6), could not 
have been one of his periods of great literary activity. 
So many of his plays are known to have been in exist- 
ence at the former date, it follows that there are only 
six which could by any possibility have been written 
after that time, and it is not likely that the whole of 
those belong to so late an era. These facts lead irre- 
sistibly to the conclusion that the poet (Shaksper) 
abandoned literary occupation a considerable period 
before his decease, and in all probability, when he 
disposed of his theatrical property." H.-P., I, 232. 

Fleay, 67, considers Shaksper' s "retirement from 
the stage in 16 10 nearly a certainty" . There is no 
tradition in the twenty-five years of his life in lyondon 
and the provinces, and the five or six in Stratford 
after his retirement, that he ever studied one hour, 
and being the kind of man he was, leading the life he 
led, he could by no possibility have studied anywhere 
or at any time. The life of a strolling player, and 
according to Halliwell-Phillipps, he led that life from 
the start, and nearly to the end of his connection with 
the theater, was antagonistic to study, even were there 
any inclination; while all the facts go to show there 
was no inclination. 

If the player acquired the learning necessary, as he 



WII^IvlAM SHAKSPEIr'S THIRST FOR WKAI^TH. 1 85 

Strolled about the country, and wrote these plays on 
the tramp, (a proposition too absurd for consideration, 
one would think, but which nevertheless seems to be 
confidently entertained by many Shaksperolators) , 
spending the night in his cart, or the next bam, how 
many vans must have followed the much-studying 
man, bearing the ponderous tomes ("the ponderous 
folios so dear to the XVI century" Walter Scott), to 
be mastered and consulted. Nearly all of the learning 
of that day had to be drawn from original sources, for 
there were no compendiums , no encyclopedias, a?id almost 
no translations. If the tomes were carried, and the 
player sat up of nights exploring them, composing the 
plays, and writing them out in his peculiar hiero- 
glyphics, what became of the vast accumulations of 
books and manuscript; who interpreted the scrawls 
and transcribed them, and where are the interpreter's 
testimonies, and the traditions of him and them? 

Afterwards, at Stratford, in his retirement, accord- 
ing to Knight, but not according to Phillipps, he wrote 
plays that ' 'were the result of profound study of the 
whole range of Roman history including the nice 
details of Roman manners' ' . The Greek plays show 
exactly the same profound study of Greek history 
and manners. Where were the books and proofs of 
this assertion? There was not a book in William 
Shaksper's house at his death. As I write, an item is 
running through the newspapers to the effect that Dr. 
A. Conan Doyle states, in one of his lectures, that it 
took one year and a half hard reading of i , 500 books 
before he was well enough posted in the subject to 
write it out. And another writer of a popular romance 



1 86 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. 

tells US that before she wrote it, she read a hundred 
and fifty books to get the necessary history. Yet as 
much reading and as much study must have been re- 
quired to enable the author of any one of twenty of 
the Shakespeare plays to write it, as it cost these recent 
authors to write their romances, and his dif&culties 
were immeasurably greater than theirs. A trifle that 
the apologists of the Stratford man have failed to 
note. 

' 'There is preserved in the College of Arms the draft 
of a grant for coat-armour to John Shakespere, dated 
1596. It may be safely inferred from the unprosperous 
circumstances of the grantee, that this attempt to con- 
fer gentility on the family was made at the poet's ex- 
pense." H.-P. I, 130. The player's profession pre- 
vented any hope of having a grant of this kind made 
directly to himself. In former times, only the sover- 
eign could make a gentleman, but before Elizabeth's 
day, the herald king-at-arms had obtained the right. 
"In our days," says an old writer, "all are accounted 
gentlemen that have money, and if he has no coat-of- 
arms, the king-at-arms can sell him one." "It ap- 
pears that Sir William Dethick, garter king-at-arms, 
in 1596 and 1599, was subsequently called to account 
for having granted coats to persons whose station in 
society and circumstances gave them no right to the 
distinction. The case of John Shakspere was one of 
those complained of". Collier, I^ife. 

"His (Shaksper's) most notable act was to obtain 
on two occasions by flagrant fraud with the complicity 
of the Garter King-at-arms, a gross rascal named 
John Dethick, a grant of armorial bearings, to which 



WII.I.IAM shakspsr's Thirst for weai^th. 187 

he had no right whatever, a transaction which caused 
bitter complaint against the management of the Her- 
ald's College, although it refused to confirm Dethick's 
action in both instances," O'Connor, Hamlet's Note- 
book, 74, 

The application of John Shakspere claimed that his 
ancestors had been advanced by Henry VII, and that 
they had received lands in Warwickshire, and that his 
mother was the daughter of one of the heirs of Robert 
Arden, Gentleman. All which representations were 
false, and the application was not granted. "Toward 
the close of the year 1599, a renewed attempt was 
made by the poet to obtain a grant of coat-armour 
for his father. It was now proposed to impale the 
arms of Shakespere with those of Arden, and on each 
occasion ridiculous statements" (which means lying 
statements) ' 'were made respecting the claims of the 
family. Both were really descended from obscure 
country yeomen. But the heralds made out that the 
predecessors of John Shakspere were rewarded by the 
crown for distinguished services, and that his wife's 
ancestors were entitled to armorial bearings. Although 
the poefs relations at a later date asstimed the right to 
the coat suggested for his father, in 1596, zV does not 
appear that either of the proposed grants were ratified by 
the College, and certainly nothing more is heard of the 
Arden impalement". H.-P., I, 178. "The rolls of 
that reign (Henry VII) have been recently and care- 
fully searched, and the name of Shakespeare, accord- 
ing to any mode of spelling it, does not occur in 
them." Collier, Life, 18. 

"If the reader who is curious in such matters will 



1 88 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. 

turn to the drafts of tlie applicant, that of 1596, on 
page 56, vol. 2, H.-P., and that of 1599, on page 60, 
and examine the interlineations that were made from 
time to time and which are indicated by italics, he will 
see how the applicant was drawn from falsehood to 
falsehood to meet the objections which were made 
against his claims of gentility. 

"In the first appHcation, it was stated that it was 
John Shaksper's 'parents and late ancestors', who ren- 
dered valiant service to King Henry VII, and were 
rewarded by him. This was not deemed sufiiciently 
explicit, and so it was interlined that the said John 
had married Mary, daughter and one of the heirs of 
Robert Arden, of Wilmecote, in the said county, Gent. 
But in the proposed grant of 1599, it is stated that it 
was John Shakspere's grandfather who had rendered 
these invaluable services to King Henry VII, and, be- 
ing driven to particulars, we are now told that this 
grandfather was advanced and rewarded with lands 
and tenements given him in parts of Warwickshire 
where they have continued by some descents in good 
reputation and credit. This is wholesale lying. There 
were no such lands, and they had not descended by 
some descents in the family. But this is not all. 
Finding the application opposed, the fertile Shaksper 
falls back on a new falsehood, and declares that a coat 
of arms had already been given his father twenty years 
before. 'And he also produces this, his ancient coat 
of arms, heretofore assigned to him whilst he was her 
Majesty's officer and bailiff at that time.' And White 
tells us that upon the margin of the draft of 1596, 
John Shakspere 'sheweth a patent thereof under Clar- 



WII.I.IAM SHAKSPEJr's THIRST ?OR WEjAI^TH. 1 89 

euce Cook's hands in paper, twenty years past'. (lyife 
and Genius. ) But his patent can no more be found 
than the land which Henry VII granted, etc. The 
whole thing was a series of lies and forgeries, a tissue 
of frauds from beginning to end." Donnelly, 53. 

Richard Grant White says that when he saw the 
mean house in which John Shaksper lived, "I knew 
that Shakspere himself must have felt what a sham 
was the pretension of gentry set up for his father, 
when the coat of arms was asked for and obtained by 
the actor's money from the Herald's College, that 
coat of arms which Shakspere prized because it made 
him a gentleman by birth. This it was more than the 
squalid appearance of the place which saddened me. ' ' 
England Without and Within, 526. 

Nevertheless, there is a persistent effort on the part 
of recent biographers of Shaksper, and of Shak- 
sperean writers, to fix that coat of arms upon the 
player. Rolfe (Shakespeare the Boy) is so enamored 
of it that he presents it twice on the cover, on back 
and side; and the Temple Shakespeare stamps it on 
the cover of each volume; Cargill's paper on "Shake- 
speare as an Actor' ' , elsewhere referred to, is prefaced 
by the same coat of arms; and even Sidney lyce's book, 
1898, bears this bogus coat on the cover. Yet the 
biographers and writers, every one of them, knew and 
know that the thing is a lie. Look out for frauds 
wherever William Shaksper is mentioned. 

Ratsie said that the player was penurious. As to 
this feature of his character there is some curious evi- 
dence. "In the Chamberlain's accounts of Stratford is 
found a charge, in 1614, for 'one quart of sack, and 



igo SHAKSPKR NOT" SHAKElSPElARS. 

one quart of claret wine, given to a preacher at the 
New Place' (Shaksper's own house). What manner 
of man must he have been who would require the 
town to pay for the wine furnished to his guests?" 
Donnelly, 57. What would a Virginian think of a 
man who charged a visiting preacher's whiskey to the 
county ? 

He continued to buy and sell land, loan money, 
prosecute his debtors, collect the tithes, manage his 
farm, brew beer, and sell malt; and was one of the 
several parties who were engaged in a conspiracy to 
force the enclosure of the common land in the vicinity 
of Stratford; in other words, to rob the poor of their 
immemorial rights of pasturage. "An attempt is 
made by W. Combe, the squire of Welcombe, to en- 
close a large portion of the neighboring common fields; 
this attempt was opposed by the corporation but was 
supported by Mainwaring and Shakspere. The latter 
clearly acted simply with a view to his own personal 
interest". Fleay, 173. 

"It is certain that the poet was in favor of the en- 
closures, for on Dec. 23rd, 16 14, the corporation ad- 
dressed a letter of remonstrance to him on the subject, 
and another on the same day to a Mr. Wainwaring. 
The latter, who had been practically bribed by some 
land agreements at Welcombe, undertook to protect 
the interest of Shakspere. So there can be no doubt 
that the three parties (one Replingham acting with 
the other two named) were acting in unison." H.-P., 
I, 247. "Three greedy cormorants combined to rob 
the people of their ancient rights." Donnelly, 60. 

William Shaksper, of Stratford-on-Avon, lived fifty- 



WIIvIvlAM SHAKSPE;R*S I^HIRST I^OR Wi^AI.I'H. I9I 

two years in Stratford and in I^ondon. He is the 
reputed author of at least thirty-six world famous 
plays, and half a dozen no less remarkable poems. As 
his knowledge, if we may judge by these productions, 
was all-embracing, and his wit and humor superlative, 
it is to be supposed that his conversation was in keep- 
ing. It is also to be supposed that he, when in I^on- 
don, associated with other poets and literary men, who 
would often have taken notes of his wise and felicitous 
sayings. It is therefore odd that there should have 
been found in all the writings of that age — in books, 
letters, diaries, memoranda — record of but two conver- 
sations ever held by any persons with this William 
Shaksper, and that those should not relate to poetry, 
the dramatic art, or any kindred matter, even his the- 
ater, but simply to the enclosure of the common-land 
above spoken of ? The town clerk of Stratford made 
the following entry in his record book: "17 Nov., 
(1614), My cosen Shakespeare corny ng yesterday to 
town, I went to see how he did. He told me that they 
assured him they ment to inclose noe further than to 
Gospell Bush and so upp straight (leaving out the part 
of the Dyngles to the Field) to the Gate in Clopton 
hedge, and take in Salisburyes peece; and that they 
mean in April to survey the land, and then to give 
satisfaction and not before; and he and Mr. Hall say 
that they think ther will be nothyng done at all." 
And the further entry, in Sept. 1615: "Mr. Shake- 
speare telling J. Greene that 'I was not able to bear 
the enclosing of Welcombe' ". Mr. Phillipps adds, 
' 'why the last observation should have been chronicled 
at all is a mystery." 



192 SHAKSPE^R NOT SHAKE^SPKARB;. 

In the well-known anecdote found written in Man- 
ningliam's diary, player Shaksper is said to have 
spoken eight words, to-wit: "William the Conqueror 
was before Richard 3rd." Which words, with the 
others heard by the town clerk, are the sum total of 
the recorded utterances of the "myriad-minded poet 
and dramatist", if William Shaksper was William 
Shakespeare! 



the; i^:^stimony oi'' the; pi,ays. 193 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE TESTIMONY OE THE PlyAYS. 

I have shown the sort of people WiUiam Shaksper 
sprang from, and the sort he associated with in his 
youth, the sordid environment, the lack of all oppor- 
tunity for mental improvement, the character of the 
people he went to, and all the rest of his life associated 
with, in lyondon, the nature of the public theater and 
the audiences that frequented it. So far the possibil- 
ities of Shaksper having been capable of writing the 
Shakespeare plays are all against him. I now propose 
to show by the evidence of the plays themselves that 
the question of his authorship is not worth one mo- 
ment' s consideration. 

What kind of language did young Shaksper use 
when he reached lyondon, at the age of 22 or 23? It 
certainly was not English; that he had never learned. 
He must have spoken the language of his parents and 
grandparents, of his relations and neighbors, the only 
language he could have heard since he was born. Mr. 
Phillipps tells us that nearly every one of the boy's 
connections was a farmer, and farmers, the world over, 
use no language other than the language of the soil. 
That, in the present case, was the Warwickshire dia- 
lect, and it was in great degree unintelligible to the 



I94 SHAKSPKR not SHAKElSPKAREi. 

inhabitants of other counties.* "The members of 
Elizabeth's Parliament could not comprehend each 
other. When the soldiers Elizabeth summoned were 
grouped about the camp, they could not understand a 
word of command unless given by officers from their 
own shire." Morgan. 

Macaulay, Hist. Eng. I, 298, describing the English 
country gentlemen of the time of the accession of 
William III, said: "His language and pronunciation 
were such as we should now expect to have only from 
the most ignorant clowns. His oaths, coarse jests 
and scurrilous terms of abuse were uttered with the 
broadest accent of his province. It was easy to dis- 
cern, from the first words which he spoke, whether he 
came from Somersetshire or Yorkshire' ' . This was a 
full hundred years after William Shaksper carried his 
patois to l/ondon. 

And of this patois, what would be the extent of the 
young man's vocabulary? Certainly not more than 

* Morgan gives some pages of eighteentii century Warwick- 
sliire patois, in part as follows: 

Old man: (meeting lad with fishing pole on his way to the 
Avon) " 'E waund thu bist agwain fishun'?" 

Lad: "Yus, gaffer, E be gwan pint umbit." 

Old man: "Oy Breckling, E 'ad gist spurt times. Thee 
mindst Red-nob, doesn't? Ah, thee shoodst sin un, reklin, 
when Ivard Coventry come age, when Brud Strit long o' Pashaws 
wuz a chock tables un foolks sittin down dinner at un and cad- 
die enow to phaze divil 'imself!" etc., etc. 

The patois two hundred years earlier, in the days of Shak- 
sper, must have been by many degrees more barbarous than the 
sample here given. Truly, a fine equipment for a young man 
ambitious for literary honors, coming to I/ondon at the age 
of 22! 



TH:^ ^EJSl^IMONY OIC THE^ PlvAYS. 1 95 

four or five hundred words, at the outside. The first 
thing he had to do was to divest himself of the patois 
and begin to learn English. Max Muller in ' 'Science 
of lyanguage", says: "We are told by a country cler- 
gyman that some of the laborers in his parish had not 
three hundred words in their vocabulary. A well 
educated person in Kngland,who has been at a public 
school, and at the university, who reads the Bible, the 
Times, and all the books of Mudie's I^ibrary, seldom 
uses more than 3,000 words in actual conversation. 
Accurate thinkers and close reasoners . . . sel- 
dom employ a larger stock, and eloquent speakers may 
rise to the command of 10,000. Shakespeare, who 
displayed a greater variety of expression than proba- 
bly any writer in any and all languages, produced all 
his plays with about 15,000 words. Milton's works 
were built up with 8,000." In a course of three lec- 
tures delivered at Oxford, and reprinted at Chicago, 
Professor Muller said: "Few of us use more than 
3,000 or 4,000 words; Shakespeare used about 15,000." 
Craik estimates the Shakespeare vocabulary (poems 
and plays) at 21,000 words, and Clark agrees with 
Craik, as also does Meiklejohn. 

This extraordinary vocabulary seems entirely too 
great for one individual, and hence it has been argued 
that this alone is enough to show that several hands 
took part in the Shakespeare plays. Thus Stotsen- 
burg, Indianapolis News, 5th May, 1897, says: "Such 
voluminous and learned writers as Thackeray or Dick- 
ens (or Fiske) do not use over 5,000 words. John 
Milton surpassed all other writers as to word use by 
stretching the number to seven thousand. Presump- 



196 shae:spb)r no'T shake^sp^are;. 

lively, therefore, if the writers of the plays were 
as prolific in words as Milton, there were three of 
them at least. If judged by the Thackeray stand- 
ard there were not less than four". Inasmuch as, 
with four writers as prolific in words as Thackeray, 
one-half the words in their respective vocabularies 
would be identical, there would be required eight such 
writers to make up one vocabulary as extensive as 
"Shakespeare's". This agrees with T. W. White's 
estimate. He assigns certain of the plays to Greene, 
Marlowe, Peele, Nash, Lodge, Chapman, Daniel and 
Bacon. Stotsenburg finds positive evidence that the 
Sonnets were written by Sidney, and the Venus and 
lyucrece by Marlowe. The vocabulary of Shakespeare 
from this point of view is not unreasonable. 

Marsh, Lectures on the Kng. Language, 182, says: 
"If a scholar were to be required to name without ex- 
amination, the authors whose English vocabulary was 
the largest, he probably would specify the all-embrac- 
ing Shakespeare, and the all-knowing Milton. And 
yet, in all the works of the great dramatist there occur 
not more than 15,000 words, in the poems of Milton 
not more than 8,000." 

The English language of to-day is comparatively 
settled, but in the time of Elizabeth, the number of 
words was small — the language was in process of mak- 
ing. The great writers. Bacon, Spenser, Hooker, the 
author or authors of the Shakespeare poems and plays, 
and others, were compelled to coin multitudes of new 
words from Latin and Greek; from French and other 
modern languages; but above all from Latin, to give 
expression to their thoughts; and thus, within a few 



THK TESTIMONY OP THE PI,AYS. 1 97 

years, an enormous number of new words were 
brought into the language. Dr. Johnson says that 
from the works of Bacon alone a dictionary of the 
English language could be compiled. 

[Donnelly says: "Even as this book is being printed, 
a writer in the Chicago Tribune calls attention to the 
surprising fact that the New English Dictionary now 
being published in England, and in which is given the 
time and the place when and where each English 
word made its first appearance, proves that in the first 
two hundred pages of the work there are 146 words, 
now in common use, which were invented, or formed 
out of the raw materials of his own and other lan- 
guages, by the man who wrote the Shakespeare plays. 
And the writer shows that at this rate our total in- 
debtedness to the man we call Shakespeare for addi- 
tions to the vocabulary of the English tongue would 
be not less than 5,000 words. We owe to the poet the 
first use of the word air in one of its senses as a noun, 
and three as a verb or participle. He first said air- 
drawn, and airless. He added a new significance to 
airy and aerial. Nobody before him had written 
aired. . . . In no previous writer have Dr. Mur- 
ray's argus eyes detected accide?itly, nor any of the fol- 
lowing: abjectly, acutely, admiringly, adoptedly, ad- 
versely. To absolutely, accordingly, actively and affec- 
tionately, 'Shakespeare' added a new sense. It is not 
a little surprising that the word abreast was never 
printed before the couplet: 

'My soul shall thine keep company in heaven; 
Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast,' 



198 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPE;ARE;. 

Of the words aud meanings first given by Shake- 
speare, at least two-thirds are of classic origin."] 

How came the untaught William Shaksper by the 
extraordinary and prodigious vocabulary exhibited in 
the Shakespeare plays? 

Macaulay (Essay on Dryden) tells us that, "Genius 
will not furnish the poet with a vocabulary; it will not 
teach him what word exactly corresponds to his idea, 
and will most fully convey it to others. Information 
and experience are necessary; not for the purpose of 
strengthening the imagination, which is never so 
strong as in people incapable of reasoning — savages, 
children, etc.; but for the purpose of enabling the 
artist to communicate his conceptions to others. . . . 
Should a man, gifted by nature with all the genius of 
Canova, attempt to carve a statue without instruction 
as to the management of his chisel, or attention to the 
anatomy of the human body, he would produce some- 
thing compared with which the Highlander at the 
door of the snuff- shop would deserve admiration. If 
an uninitiated Raphael were to attempt a painting, it 
would be a mere daub. ' ' 

I asked a Professor of Rhetoric in one of our great 
Western universities what he considered the extent of 
the vocabulary of a laborer or small farmer in his 
region. He replied, "Krom 250 to 400 words, accord- 
ing to his location. ' ' 

I asked another Professor of Rhetoric, this time in 
one of the Eastern universities, who had for many 
years taught L^atin and Greek, what course he would 
advise a young man of limited opportunities in his 
early years to pursue in order to attain a fairly copi- 



THK TESTIMONY OF TH:^ PLAYS. 1 99 

ous vocabulary; not telling him however that the 
youth I had in mind was one William Shaksper. He 
laid me out a course that would require hard study for 
years, and practice; reading especially and always the 
Bible; the best prose authors and poets, above all 
Shakespeare; translating English into Latin, and re- 
translating in English. ' 'Practice is the greatest thing, 
versate majiu diu nocteque' ' . Above all (the best poets 
and prose writers) Shakespeare! Study him, young 
man, if you wish to enlarge your vocabulary, and 
learn what the English language is capable of! 



Hartley Coleridge, in his hfe of Massinger, says of 
that poet: "His classical allusions are frequent, but 
not like those of Ben Jonson, recondite, nor like those 
of Shakespeare and of Milton, amalgamated and con- 
substantiated with his native thought." 

■ That is to say. Hartley Coleridge, a competent judge 
of education and literary attainments, ranks the author 
of the Shakespeare plays with Milton for profundity 
of classical learning, and both above the learned Jon- 
son. There is as clear evidence of classical learning 
in Titus Andronicus, Love's Labour's Lost, Midsum- 
mer Night's Dream, Troilus and Cressida, and many 
other plays, as in Milton' s Lycidas. 

"The marvelous accuracy, the real substantial learn- 
ing, of the three Roman plays of Shakespeare present 
the most complete evidence to our mind that they 
were the results of profound study of the whole range 
of Roman history, including the nice details of Roman 
manners, not in those days to be acquired in a compendious 



200 shakspe;r not Shakespeare. 

form, but to be brought out by diligent reading alone." 
Knight, 528. 

"In his Roman plays he appears co-existent with 
his wonderful characters, and to have read all the 
obscure pages of Roman history with a clearer eye 
than philosopher or historian. When he emploj^ed 
lyatinisms in the construction of his sentences and 
even in the creation of new words, he does so with 
singular facility and unerring correctness' ' , Id. , 1. c. 
Any one who has studied an ancient language knows 
that years of hard work were passed before such 
language became "amalgamated and consubstantiated 
with his native thought' ' , if it ever did (and in most 
cases it did not); that is, became to him as his native 
tongue. Every Professor and every educated man 
will agree to this in the case of John Robinson. The 
circumstances were far more adverse in the day of 
William Shaksper. 

Trench, "On the Study of Words", Lecture IV, 
says: "We must not omit him who is a maker (of 
words) by the very right of his name — I mean the 
poet. . . . The passion of such times, the all- 
f using imagination, will at once suggest and justify 
audacities in speech upon which in calmer moods he 
would not venture, or if he ventured would fail to 
carry others with him; for only the fluent metal runs 
easily into novel shapes and moulds. . . . He 
will enrich his native tongue with words unknown 
and non-existent before — non-existent, that is, save in 
their elements; for in the historic period of a language 
it is not permitted to any rnan to bring new roots into it, 
but 07ily to work on already giveji materials; to evolve 



THK TESTIMONY OF THE) PI<AYS. 20I 

what is latent therein, to combine what is apart, to 
recall what has fallen out of sight. The more deliberate 
coining of words will often find place for the supplying 
of discovered deficiencies in a language. The manner 
in which men become aware of such deficiencies w 
through comparison of their own language with another 
and a richer, a comparison which is forced upon them, 
so that they cannot put it by, when it becomes neces- 
sary for them to express in their own tongue that 
which has already found utterance in another, and so 
has shown that it is utterable in human speech. With- 
out such a comparison the existence of the want would 
probably have seldom dawned on the most thought- 
ful". 

On the same matter, in I^ecture V, this writer says: 
"One of the arts of a great poet or prose writer who 
wishes to add emphasis to his style, to bring out all 
the latent forces of his native tongue, will very often be 
to recomiect by his use of it a word with its original 
derivation. How often Milton does this!" Dr. Trench 
might have coupled Shakespeare with Milton here, for 
the allegation is as true of one as of the other. The 
habitual coining of words from the I^atin by an Eng- 
lish writer, according to this author, is the evidence of 
a thorough knowledge of and familiarity with I^atin. 
He has ' 'to work on already given materials to evolve 
what is latent therein," etc., etc. How could Shake- 
speare have compared his language with the other and 
richer one had he not been profoundly acquainted with 
the latter through study of books ? 

Hallam, Lit. Eur., speaking of "the phrases unin- 
telligible and improper except in the case of their 



202 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKSSPBJAR:^. 

primitive roots which occur so copiously in the (Shake- 
speare) plays," says: "In the Midsummer Night's 
Dream these are much less frequent than in his later 
dramas, but here we find several instances, thus: 'things 
base and vile, holding no quantity, for value' ; rivers 
'that have overborne their continents,' the continente 
riva of Horace; 'compact of imagination'; 'something 
of great constancy,' for consistency; 'sweet Py ramus 
translated there'; 'the laws of Athens, which by 
no means we may exte?iuate\ I have considerable 
doubt whether any of these expressions would be 
found in any of the contemporary prose of Elizabeth's 
reign; but could authority be produced for Latinisms 
so forced, it is still not very likely that one who did 
not understand their proper meaning would have in- 
troduced them into poetry." 

Charles Knight, speaking of Shakespeare's use of 
the word expediefit, says: "The word properly means 
'that disengages itself from all entanglements'. To 
set at liberty the foot which was held fast is exped-ire. 
Shakespeare always uses this word in strict accordaiice 
with its derivation, as in truth he does most words which 
may be called lear7ied. 

Judge Holmes, 690, says: "Upon the word /r(f?;2z.yd'^, 
Theobald made the observation that Shakespeare is 
very peculiar in his adjectives; and it is much in his 
manner to use the words borrowed from the I^atin 
closer to their original signification than they were 
vulgarly used in; so here he uses premised in the sense 
of the word from which it is derived, praemissus, that 
is, sent before. This is the use of a writer whose 
mind is so thoroughly imbued with the Latin Ian- 



the; TEJSTIMONY OF THE) PIvAYS. 203 

guage that he unconsciously incorporates it into his 
English". 

Dr. Baynes, Shakespeare Studies, 225, says of 
Touchstone's words to Audrey, "I am here with thee 
and thy goats as the most capricio^is poet Ovid was 
among the Goths". Ovid was among the Goths 
(Gotes, the Getae, a Thracian tribe among whom 
Ovid in his banishment, dwelt). That "'the epithet 
'capricious' {caper, a goat) in this speech is a good ex- 
ample of the subtle playing with words, the skillful 
suggestion of double meanings of which Shakespeare 
in common with Ovid, is so fond." 

Dr. "W. Theobald, Baconiana, 2, 453, says: "When 
the author of the Shakespeare plays wrote 

While that the coulter rusts 

That should deracinate such savagery — 

the coining of the new word deracinate (to tear up by 
the roots) is evidence of his thorough familiarity with 
the I^atin tongue. And there are hundreds and hun- 
dreds of words like that coined by him. ' ' 

In Act V, scene i, Henry VI, Part i, King Henry 
says: 

For I always thought 

It was both impious and unnatural 

That such immanity and bloody strife 

Should reign among professors of one faith. 

And in scene 3, Joan says: 

The Regent conquers and the Frenchman flies — 
Now help me charming spells, and periapts. 

Now these words "immanity", and "periapt", if 



204 shakspe;r not shakkspb;are;. 

they stood alone, instead of being examples of a nu- 
merous class of words in the plays, would prove that 
the author was perfectly famiUar with both Latin 
and Greek. '' Immanitas' ^ is a lyatin word, used by 
Cicero (meaning barbarity, cruelty), but certainly 
one which no Bnglishman not a good lyatin scholar 
would dream of using; and the word "periapt" is 
equally significant of a good knowledge of Greek, be- 
ing directly derived from the Greek word periapto, to 
tie around some part of the body. Words of this 
class, or English words used in a classical sense, are 
numerous in the plays, and prove even more directly 
than classical references that the author was a pro- 
found classical scholar, as he never could have ac- 
quired them by the use of translations, but only 
through his own familiarity with the classical lan- 
guage. 

In Baconiana, VI, are further illustrations by Dr. 
Theobald: 

"With cadent tears fret diannels in her cheeks". 

Lear, i, 4, 307. 

from cado, to fall. 

A very curious piece of lyatinity occurs in Helen's 
allusion to her hopeless love for Bertram: 

I know I love in vain , . . 

Yet in this captious and intenible sieve, 

I still pour in the waters of my love. 

All 's Well, I, 3, 207. 

Captious has the meaning of the word capio, I take or 
receive. Intenible represents the word tenio, I hold, 
with the privative participle in, i. e., I do not hold. 



the; testimony of the; pi.ays. 205 

.The frozen regions of the Alps 
Or any other ground inhabitable. 

Richard II, i, i, 64. 

/;^liabitable, z^whabitable. The word is used in the 
Ivatin sense, which is exactly the reverse of the cur- 
rent sense. 

Opptigna7icy , pro-pugnation , repugn, with the cog- 
nate words repugnancy, and repugnant. These words 
are all used by Shakespeare in their strictest classical 
sense, and they show in a very striking way the dis- 
criminating accuracy of his classical diction. 

. . . What discord follows: each thing meets 
In mere oppugnancy, (active and offensive warfare). 

Troilus and Cressida, i, 3, 119. 

"What propiignation is in one man's valor", etc. 1. c. 

II, 2, 136. 

(defensive warfare) . What possible defense can one 
man, however brave, afford ? 

. . . Sleep upon it 

And let the foes quietly cut their throats 

Without repugnancy. Timon, III, 5, 42. 

Reptigno, passive resistance. 

Double is an English word used in a classic sense: — 

The magnifico . . . hath in his effect a voice potential, 
As double as the duke's. Othello, I, 3, 12, 

The lyatin word to double, duplex, may also mean 
thick, stout, strong, and this is the meaning in the 
passage quoted. In Coriolanus, II, 3, 121: 

His doubled spirit requickened what in flesh was/atigate, 



206 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKE;SPB;ARK. 

z, e., his strong and invincible spirit, etc. . . . 
Fatigue is tiie l^dXin fatigatus. 

And bowed his eminent top to their low rank. 

All 's Well, I, 2, 41. 

The I^atin word emineo, to jut out, to project. It 
is a word of measurement, not simply an expression 
of renown. 

She doth evitate and show a thousand irreligious, cursed horns. 

Merry Wives, V. 5, 241. 

The lyatin word evitare, to avoid. 

The word stelled is used with two absolutely distinct 
meanings, neither of them English, one Latin, the 
other Greek. The Latin sense is related to the word 
Stella, a star or constellation. Of Lear, in the Tem- 
pest, it is said: 

The Sea, with such a storm as his bare head 

In hell black night endured, would have buoyed up, 
And quenched the stelled fires. 

The other sense is from the Greek word stello, mean- 
ing to fix, set in its place. It occurs twice, first in the 
24th Sonnet: 

My eye hath played the painter and hath stelled 
Thy beauty's form in the table of my heart., 

The other in Lucrece (1443): 

To this well painted piece is Lucrece come 
To find a face where all distress is stelled. 

A very curious word is constringed, which occurs 
once only: 



THK TESTIMONY OF THE PI,AYS. 207 

"The dreadful spirit wtiich shipmen do the hurricane call, con- 
stringed in mass by the Almighty Sun." 

Troilus and Cres., "VII, 171. 

The word is lyatin. Co7istri7igo means "bind to- 
gether", "tie up like a bundle", and so, metaphor- 
ically, ' 'give coherence or consistence' ' . 

''Simular is not English, but Shakespeare uses it: 

Thou perjured and thou simular man of virtue, 
Thou art incestuous. Lear, III, 2, 51. 

Simula is I^atin, meaning to copy, or imitate, coun- 
terfeit, feign. Simular man of virtue, therefore, 
means a man whose virtue is sham or counterfeit. 

The word speculation in English refers to mental op- 
eration, not eyesight. Shakespeare always, and Bacon 
often, uses it in the physical sense, outward light, not 
inward vision: 

Thou hast no speculation in those eyes. 
Which thou dost glare with. 

Macbeth, III, 4, 95. 

Such ex-sufflicate and blown surmises. 

Othello, III, 3, 182. 

The Eatin words ex and sufflo, to blow out. It 
means inflated, wind-bags, bubbles." 

"A good many instances of classic construction in 
the grammar of the sentences are to be found — sen- 
tences cast into grammatical form not strictly English, 
which can not well be parsed without the help of the 
Eatin grammar. Dr. Abbot, in his learned and ex- 
haustive 'Shakespeare Grammar' , gives many illustra- 
tions of this' ' : 



2o8 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKi^SPE^ARiE. 

Mr. Theobald closes his paper thus: "Here, then, 
are some thirty words out of a collection of more than 
250, showing that L^atin was a step-mother tongue to 
the poet; he had probably been accustomed to use it 
as an instrument of expression, and the arts and frag- 
ments of it were perpetually scattered in his English 
composition. ... If the writer was so familiar 
with the classic languages as to have all the literature 
of Greece and Rome at his command — if I^atin was so 
familiar to him that it obtruded itself upon his En- 
glish, and made him talk and write with a foreign 
(classic) accent, he could not have been such a man as 
William Shakspere was. ' ' 

One thing is puzzling: William Shaksper is de- 
clared by Fiske and others to have written the plays 
to fill his theater; and we are told by all his biogra- 
phers that the audiences were made up of illiterate 
persons. How much then could this rabble have com- 
prehended? What idea did they attach, for example, 
to "deracinating savagery"; to "incarnadining the 
multitudinous seas"; to the apostrophizing of "peri- 
apts"; to a "captious and intenible sieve"; or "ex- 
sufflicate surmises"? How much of his fifteen to 
twenty-one thousand vocabulary was comprehended 
by individuals whose requirements and attainments 
were restricted to three or four hundred words? 
Very little indeed, I should say. Would not the un- 
known language of the plays have bewildered and 
disgusted the stinkards and prostitutes who made up 
the bulk of the audience; and would they not, at 
times, in their fury, have given the players a hiding? 

The rustic Shaksper comes to I^ondon with what ac^ 



TH:e TESTIMONY OF THE) PI.AYS. 209 

complisliments we have seen — almost devoid of polished 
accomplishments, Halliwell-Phillipps says — speaking 
the patois of his neighborhood, quite uninstructed in 
English; (had he even gone to school, in Stratford, he 
would have been taught I^atin but not English), 
finds employment, at first outside the theater, then as 
a servitour inside; is in time admitted to the company 
of players, and what sort of men they were morally 
and intellectually, we have seen; works his way up, 
and in a few years becomes part proprietor in the 
theater, and is on the road to secure a money compe- 
tence. In the summer and autumn, he and the rest 
of the company stroll all over England, even into Scot- 
land; in the winter they gather at the Curtain or the 
Globe. Five or six years after this youth leaves 
Stratford, there come from the press two poems, 
bearing on their title pages the name of ' 'William Shake- 
peare", a name this players family, in all its genera- 
tions and branches, had never borne; which poems 
were and are to-day unsurpassed in the language for 
choice diction, and showed that the author was pos- 
sessed of a thorough knowledge of English and 
familiarity with I^atin. The poems were both pre- 
ceded and followed by a series of plays which dis- 
covered a vocabulary in extent exceeding that used 
by any previous poet or prose writer; a large number 
of words coined directly from the Latin or Greek 
roots, or from French, Spanish, Italian. The plots 
of these plays, many of them, were taken from Span- 
ish and Italian stories, then untranslated into English. 
Is it probable, is it possible, that all this wealth of 
literature was created by the raw uneducated youth 



2IO SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKEJSPBARB;. 

who began his literary Hfe at the theater door? The 
writer of the poems and plays, as they themselves 
give evidence, was most thoroughly educated, and 
was, from the issuing of the first play, a past-master 
of the English language. Prof. George ly. Craik says: 
"In whose handling was language ever such a flame 
of fire as it is in his? His wonderful potency in the 
use of this instrument would alone set him above all 
other writers. ' ' 

This is the testimony of scholars. Emerson tells 
us that: "He of all men, best understood the En- 
glish language. ' ' 

Prof. N. G. Clark, (Elements of the English I^an- 
guage) says: "The great number of words which he 
employs are never used carelessly; they are always the 
fit words, and can rarely be changed for others as ex- 
pressive in their place." . . . "His power lay 
not simply in the extent of his vocabulary, needful as 
this was to his purpose, but in the skillful combination 
and power of the words he employed. . , . It is 
not too much to say, that English speech as well as 
literature owes more to him than to any other man. 
. Not unwisely has the student been referred 
to Shakespeare next to the authorized version of the 
Bible for the best studies in the use of his native 
tongue." 

Mrs. Cowden Clark begins her Shakespeare Key: 

"Never was an author who combined so many dif- 
ferent words in his single writings, and not only used 
so many different words, but so many varied forms of 
words as Shakespeare; never was author who com- 
prised so many different phrases and sentences," etc. 



TH:e TESTIMONY OF THE) PI,AYS. 21 1 

Professor J. M. D. Meiklejohn, in his English lyit- 
erature, p. 372, says: "It is not sufl5.cent to say that 
Shakespeare's power of thought, of feehng, and of 
expression, required three times the number of words' ' 
(that Milton used) "to express itself; we must also 
say that Shakespeare's power of expression shows infi- 
nitely greater skill, subtility and cunning than is to be 
found in the works of Milton. Shakespeare had also 
a marvellous power of making new phrases, most 
of which have become part and parcel of our lan- 
guage," etc. 

Ruggles says: "This poet was evidently a great 
worker in words. He had dominion over every form 
of expression, understood the dramatic effect and 
moral force of each different turn of phrase, and ran 
his thoughts into any mould he pleased, and that too 
without loss of grace and felicity of expression. . . . 
Prominent skill belongs to the writer of these plays, 
who, in addition to the poet's song, and the philoso- 
pher's insight, possessed an ingenuity in the use of 
language so extraordinary as to make every word con- 
tribute to the main effect." 

George P. Marsh speaks of the "Bible, Shakespeare, 
and Milton," as "the three lodestars that held the lan- 
guage firm, without whom it would probably before 
our time have become rather Romance than Gothic in 
in its vocabulary. ' ' 

Craig says of Shakespeare: "He has exhausted 
the old world of our actual experience. . . , 
The men and the manners of all countries and of all ages 
are there; the lovers and warriors, the priests and 
propli^etesses, of the old heroic and kingly times of 



212 SHAKSPRR NOT SHAKE;SPE;ARB. 

Greece — the Athenians of the days of Pericles and 
Alcibiades, — the proud patricians and turbulent com- 
monalty of the earliest period of Republican Rome, 
— Caesar, and Brutus, and Cassius, and Antony, and 
Cleopatra, and the other splendid figures of that later 
Roman scene — the kings, and queens, and princes, and 
courtiers of barbaric Denmark, and Roman Britain, and 
Britain before the Romans, — those of Scotland in the 
time of the English Heptarchy, — those of England and 
France at the era of Magna Charta, — all ranks of the 
people in almost every reign of our subsequent history 
from the end of the fourteenth to the middle of the 
sixteenth century, — not to speak of Venice, and 
Verona, and Mantua, and Padua, and lUyria, and 
Navarre, and the Forest of Arden, and all the other 
towns and lands which he has peopled for us with 
their most real inhabitants." These quotations from 
eminent authors fully sustain my position. 

Nevertheless, Prof. John Fiske, in a paper in the 
Atlantic Monthly, entitled "Forty Years of the Bacon- 
Shakespeare Folly" meets the proposition that the 
dramas ascribed to Shakespeare "abound in evidences 
of extraordinary book learning" with "a flat denial". 
He thinks Shakespeare possessed "an extraordinary 
instinctive power of observation and assimilation;" 
that he learned desirable things "in the country town 
quite outside of books and pedagogues;" and picked 
up knowledge and wisdom from the cultured, learned, 
traveled and wise people he met and associated with 
in lyondon. It strikes me that the claim that he "who 
best understood the language' ' , he to whom ' 'the En- 
glish language was more than to other men' ' was not 



the; te;stimony op the; pi,ays. 213 

book learned, and that his proficiency was gained by 
what he could pick up on the streets of I^ondon, or in 
his evenings at a tavern, or when on the tramp, is un- 
reasonable. To say that a man who was a great 
worker in words, and who had supreme dominion over 
every form of expression — whose power of expression 
shows infinitely greater skill, sublety and cunning 
than does Milton — who has portrayed in his writings 
the men and manners of all countries and all ages, — 
gained his knowledge and accomplishments when 
leading the life of a vagabond, is absurd. To say that 
the works written by this man, who was one of the 
three great lodestars that held the English language 
firm, the other two being Milton and the Bible, show 
no evidence of extraordinary book learning, is pre- 
posterous. Mr. Fiske's flat denial makes it evident 
that he has not studied his subject. 

Any Professor of I^anguage or Rhetoric knows and 
will testify, that in the case of John Brown, such an 
amazing proficiency would argue ancestral predis- 
position, felicitous surroundings from babyhood, early 
and the best instruction, constant association with cul- 
tivated and learned persons, and unceasing study from 
youth to manhood, and to middle age. And there is 
not a Professor but will declare that illiterate or 
semi-educated John Jones, coming to the city at the 
age of 22 or 23, could by no possibility attain full 
command of English, to say nothing of any classic or 
modern language, within seven or seventeen years, if 
he gave every moment of his life to it. How many 
persons have thought of the labor and practice that 
would be required to bring the vocabulary of even an 



214 SHAKSPBJR NOl" SHAESSPElAREi. 

educated man to-day up by looo words, with all the 
modern aids of dictionaries, and other special works 
on language; and 2000 words would be "as the square 
of the distance." When it comes to 21000 words, as 
Craik gives the Shakespeare total, it is frightful. 
The labors of Hercules were nothing to such a task. 
That vocabulary should be decisive, as to the claims 
of William Shaksper.* 

It must be born in mind that there were no public 
libraries in those days. As to private ones: "Any- 
thing like a private library, even of the smallest 
dimensions, was then of the rarest occurrence, and 
that Shakspere ever owned one, at any time in his 
life, is exceedingly improbable." Wilder, 91. 

Books were cumbrous and costly, and prices made 
them beyond the reach of any but the rich. There 
were no encyclopedias, no dictionaries, no magazines, 
no newspapers, no English literature. "All the valu- 

* Wendell, 196, accounts for the Shakespeare vocabulary after 
this fashion: "From the beginning of Elizabethan literature, 
whoever had written had been constantly playing on words and 
with them (as in the badinage between Benedick and Bea- 
trice). Fantastically extravagant as such verbal quibbles gen- 
erally were, they resulted in tuisurpassed mastery of the vocabji- 
lary. Combine such mastery of the vocabulary with an instinct- 
ive sense that words are only sjmibols of actual thoughts, and 
the quibbler or punster becomes a wit of the iirst quality. 
We have seen that such a sense of the identity of word and 
thought characterizes Shakespeare from the beginning." It is 
clear as crystal therefore where the butcher's boy got his 
21,000 vocabulary; -first a punster, second a quibbler, third had 
acquired during his apprenticeship an instinctive sense that 
words are only symbols of thought; and now we can compre- 
hend how the milk came to be in the cocoa-nut. 



The^ 'r:^s'i*iMONY of i'h:^ pi,ays, 215 

able books then extant in all the vernacular languages 
of Europe would hardly have filled a single shelf, 
. . . It was therefore absolutely necessary that a 
man should be uneducated or classically educated. 
. . . The Latin was in the i6th century all and 
more than the French was in the i8th." Macaulay's 
Essay on Bacon. 

I offer a third argument as decisive as the others. 
How much of an acquaintance with the Bible could 
the boy and youth up to his hegira have had ? ' 'The 
Bible most commonly used during that period was 
either Parkers, called also the Bishop's Bible, of 
1568, required to be used in the churches; or various 
reprints of the German Bible of 1560, with short 
marginal notes, and much used in private families." 
Wordsworth's Shakespeare and The Bible, p. 9. 
Neither of these Bibles was in his father's house, nor 
had he ever heard the Bible read there, for nobody 
there could read, and moreover none of his relations 
could read. Besides, according to Halliwell-Phillipps, 
"there is no doubt that John Shakspere was one of 
the many . . . who were secretly attached to 
the Catholic religion:" and, again, '"there is no doubt 
that John Shakspere nourished all the while a latent 
attachment for the old religion. " I, 164. And "the 
local tradition in the latter part of the 17th century" 
was, that William Shaksper, as asserted by Vicar 
Davies, of Stratford-on-Avon, within fifty years after 
Shaksper's death, "died a papist". Mr. Phillipps 
fully credits this last fact. Now, Catholic families 
of that age could not abide the English Bible, as the 



2l6 SHAKSPi^R NOT SHAK:ESPE;ARE;. 

world knows. It is safe to conclude that the boy 
William never looked between the covers of any sort 
of Bible, and never heard the reading from a Bible 
unless he occasionally went to Stratford church, and 
that player Shaksper saw no more of the Bible than 
the boy had done. After reaching lyondon he had 
his work cut out for him, and his time was em- 
ployed in the service of the theatrical company, 
he striving with all his might to reach a good 
position, and to make money. This is evident be- 
cause he became in due time part owner of the 
theater, and made a great fortune. That he had in 
lyondon no more respect for the seventh commandment 
than he had in Stratford is plain from the story 
told by Manningham and hereinafter recited; and a 
man who spends his life in catering to the scum of 
lyondon is not to be supposed to be spending his nights 
poring over the Bible, or over classical literature. 
Bishop Charles Wordsworth has written a book of 
400 pages to show that "of all the books which 
Shakespeare studied in his own language, there was 
none with which he was more familiar than the Eng- 
lish Bible", p. 349. "Shakespeare has been in- 
debted to Holy Writ, not only for poetical diction and 
sentiment, but for some of the most striking and sub- 
lime images which are to be found in his works. ' ' p. 
310. He devotes 45 pages to an examination of the 
plays under the heading "Shakespeare's Facts and 
Characters of the Bible"; and 209 pages to Shake- 
speare's Principles and Sentiments derived from the 
Bible." This last named chapter begins thus: "lam 



the; TES'TIMONY OF THK PLAYS. 217 

to show how scriptural, and consequently, how just 
and true, are the conceptions which Shakespeare enter- 
tained for the being and attributes of God, of his gen- 
eral and particular providence, of His revelation to men, 
of our duty towards Him and towards each other, of 
human life and of human death, of time and eternity — ■ 
in a word, of every subject which it most concerns us 
as rational and responsible beings to conceive aright;" 
and it is surprising how all these propositions are sub- 
stantiated by an analysis of the plays. Thirty-three 
pages are given to the investigation "Of the Poetry of 
Shakespeare as derived from the Bible". On p. 345: 
"Take the entire range of English Literature, put to- 
gether our best authors, who have written upon sub- 
jects not professedly religious or theological, and we 
shall not find, I believe, so much evidence of the Bible 
having been read and used, as we have found in 
Shakespeare alone." On p. 355: "There is nothing 
of a literary kind for which we have greater reason to 
thank the Giver of all Good, than for a large propor- 
tion of these works, excepting only the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer, and that, which has imparted alike to it 
and to them no small share of the surpassing excel- 
lence, which, though in very different ways, they 
both possess — His incomparable, most holy everlasting 
Word." 

On p. 353, is quoted Mrs. Montague's remark, that 
"we are apt to consider Shakespeare only as a poet; 
but he is certainly one of the greatest moral philoso- 
phers that ever lived' ' ; and, adds the Bishop: "Whence 
did he become so ? I answer without hesitation . . . 



2i8 siiAKSPKR isroT SHAKi;sp:eAR:^. 

he drew his philosophy from the highest and purest 
source of Moral truth, ' ' * 

Every clergyman knows what is implied by an inti- 
mate knowledge of the Bible; a religious family, early 
instruction, a reverent disposition, and a fixed habit of 
reading and study. A j ury of clergymen would certainly 
find against claimant William Shaksper. Indeed, this 
matter of knowledge of the Bible is a crucial test. 
The author of the Shakespeare plays, whoever he 
was, was brought .up by religious and Protestant pa- 
rents, and studied the Bible both in youth and man- 
hood. The language of the Bible was as truly amal- 
gamated and consubstantiated with his native thought 
as was the I^atin language. Surely he was at the 
antipodes from pla3^er Shaksper. 

We have seen therefore that by no possibility could 
the player have given his time to money-making as a 
result of his devotion to his theatrical duties, vaga- 
bondizing about -the country the greater part of the 
year, and at the same time labored day and night to 
acquire a vast vocabulary, labored to "amalgamate 
classical allusions with his native thought", besides 

* Drake has said, in 1817, of the author of the Shakespeare 
plays: "That in a religious point of view, he had a claim to the 
enjoyment (of peace and sunshine of the soul), the numerous 
passages in his works, which breathe a spirit of pious gratitude 
and devotional rapture, will sufficiently declare. In fact, upon 
the topic of religious as well as ethic wisdom, no profane poet 
can furnish us with a greater number of just and luminous 
aphorisms; passages which dwell upon the heart and reach the 
soul, for they have issued from lips of fire, from conceptions 
worthy of a superior nature, from feelings solemn and un- 
earthly. ' ' 



THS TElSflMONY OP THB; Pl,AYS. 219 

the acquisition of several modern languages, and on 
the top of all, pass the same day and night over the 
Bible. 

What was the learning in the law of the author of 
these plays ? That he was a professional lawyer, all 
lawyers are agreed. Richard Grant White, himself a 
lawyer, in the Memoirs, says: "To play- writing the 
needy and gifted young lawyer turned his hand at 
that day as he does now to journalism. ... To 
what are we to attribute the fact that of all the plays 
that have survived of those written between 1580 and 
1620, Shakespeare's are most noteworthy in this re- 
spect ? For no dramatist of the time, not even Beau- 
mont, who was a younger son of a judge of the Com- 
mon Pleas, and who, after studying in the Inns of 
court, abandoned law for the drama, used legal 
phrases with Shakespeare's readiness and exactness. 
And the significance of this fact is heightened by an- 
other, — that it is only to the language of the law that 
he exhibits this inclination. . . . Legal phrases 
flow from his pen as part of his vocabulary and parcel 
of his thought. ... It has been suggested that 
it was in attendance upon the courts in London* that 
he picked up his legal vocabulary. But this supposi- 
tion not only fails to account for Shakespeare's pecu- 
liar freedom and exactness in the use of that phrase- 
ology — it does not even place him in the way of learn- 
ing those terms his use of which is most remarkable, 

* Worse than that! Mr. Sidney Lee, 32, thinks that Shak- 
sper's accurate use of legal terms may be attributed in part to 
his observation of the many legal processes in which his father 
was involved! 



220 SHAKSPllR NOT SHAK;ESPE;AR:e. 

which are not such as he would have heard at ordi- 
nary proceedings at 7iisi prhis, but such as refer to 
the tenure or transfer of real property, — 'fine and re- 
covery', 'statutes merchant', 'purchase', 'indenture', 
'tenure', 'double voucher', 'fee simple', 'fee farm', 
'remainder', 'reversion', 'forfeiture', etc. This con- 
veyancer's jargon could not have been picked up by 
hanging round the courts of law in I^ondon two hun- 
dred and fifty years ago, when suits as to the title of 
real property were comparatively rare. And beside, 
Shakespeare uses his law just as freely in his first 
plays, written in his first London years, as in those 
produced at a later period. Just as exactly, too; for 
the correctness and propriety with which these terms 
are introduced have compelled the admiration of a 
Chief Justice and a Lord Chancellor." 

On the other hand, Dr. "Wallace, who is distin- 
guished as a scientist, but is not a lawyer, conceived 
that "the law courts of Westminster would offer ample 
opportunities for extending that knowledge of law 
terms and legal processes which he had probably begun 
to acquire by means of justices' sessions and coroners' 
inquests in his native town". Lord Campbell would 
not seem to have had so high an opinion of justices' ses- 
sions in, or in the vicinity of, Stratford, as has Dr. 
Wallace, inasmuch as he suggests that "the characters 
of Dogberry and Verges, though apparently meant to 
satirize the constables, were possibly aimed as high as 
Chairman at Quarter Sessions, and even Judges of As- 
size, with whose performances he (Shaksper) may 
probably have become acquainted at Warwick or else- 
where. ' ' 



the; te;stimony of the; plays. 221 

In the same way, Dr. John Fiske, a literary man 
simply, claims that "the legal knowledge exhibited in 
the plays is no more than might readily have been ac- 
quired by a man of assimilative genius associating 
with lawyers. ' ' But a knowledge of law terms and 
legal processes is not thus to be picked up, parrot-like, 
lyord Campbell, "Shakespeare's I^egal Acquirements", 
New York, 1859, tells us: "There is nothing so dan- 
gerous as for one not of the craft to tamper with our 
freemasonry." Also: "L<et a non-professional man, 
however acute, presume to talk law, or to draw illus- 
trations from legal science in discussing other subjects, 
and he will speedily fall into some laughable ab- 
surdity."- A paragraph which I commend to Mr. 
Fiske' s attention, if he is ever tempted to put to the test 
his theory of the readiness with which he could dis- 
course on law, or write on law cases, if he had the 
mind to. Lord Campbell proceeds: "These jests — 
(Comedy of Errors) — show the author to be very fa- 
miliar with some of the most abstruse proceedings in 
English Jurisdiction. ' ' ' 'We find in several of the his- 
tories Shakspeare's fondness for law terms, and it is 
still more remarkable that whenever he indulges this 
properisity he ttniforinly lays down good law. ^'' "The 
indictment in which lyord Say was arraigned in Act 
IV, scene 7, 2nd Henry VI, seems drawn by no inex- 
perienced hand. . . . It is quite certain that the 
drawer of this indictment must have had some ac- 
quaintance with the 'Crown Circuit Companion', and 
must have had a full and accurate knowledge of that 
rather obscure and intricate subject, 'Felony and Bene- 
fit of Clergy'." "While novelists and dramatists are 



222 SHAKSPBR NOT SHAKESPBARK. 

constantly making mistakes as to the laws of marriage, 
of wills and inheritance, to Shakespeare's law, lavishly 
as he expounds it, there can neither be demurrer, nor 
bill of exceptions, nor writ of error." p. 154. 

Again, he quotes in full the 46th Sonnet and says: 
"I need not go further than this sonnet, which is so 
intensely legal in its language and imagery, that with- 
out a considerable knowledge of English forensic pro- 
cedure it cannot be fully understood. A lover being 
supposed to have made a conquest of (z. e., to have 
gained \iy purchase) his mistress, his eye; and his 
HEART holding as joint tenants, have a contest as to 
how she is to be partitioned between them — each 
moiety then to be held in severalty. There are reg- 
ular pleadings in the suit, the heart being repre- 
sented as Plaintiff and the EYE as Defendant. At 
last, issue is joined on what the one affirms and the 
other denies. Now a jury, (in the nature of an in- 
quest) is to be empanelled to decide, and by their 
verdict to apportion between the litigating parties the 
subject-matter to be decided. The jury fortunately 
are unanimous, and after due deliberation, find for the 
EYE in respect of the lady's outward form, and for the 
HEART in respect of her inward love. Surely Sonnet 
46 smells as potently of the attorney's office as any of 
the stanzas penned by Lord Kenyon while an attorney's 
clerk in Wales". 

Lord Campbell surmised that the young Shaksper 
might have been an attorney's clerk up to the time he 
fled to London. "Great as is the knowledge of law 
which Shakespeare's writings display, and familiar as 
he appears to have been with all its forms and pro- 



TH:^ tEISTlMONY OF THE) PI^AYS. 223 

ceedings, the whole of this would be accounted for if 
for some years he had occupied a desk in the ofl&ce of 
a country attorney in good business — attending ses- 
sions and assizes — keeping leets and law days — and 
perhaps being sent up to the metropolis in term time 
to conduct suits before the lyord Chancellor, or the 
Superior Courts at Westminster," But, he suggests, 
if this were so, ' 'positive and irrefragable evidence in 
Shakespeare's own handwriting might have been forth- 
coming to establish it. Not having been actually en- 
rolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local 
court at Stratford nor of the superior courts at West- 
minster would present his name as being concerned in 
any suit as an attorney; but it might reasonably have 
been expected that there would have been deeds or 
wills witnessed by him still extant; and after a very 
diligent search none such can be discovered." 

In the forty years since lyOrd Campbell's book was 
published the diligent search has not abated. Every 
old deed or will, to say nothing of other legal papers, 
dated during the period of William Shaksper's youth, 
has been scrutinized over half a dozen shires, and not 
one signature of the young man has been found. By 
all recent authors the attorney's clerk theory has been 
passed in silence. 

F. F. Heard, also a lawyer, in "Shakespeare as a 
Lawyer", says: "The Comedy of Errors shows that 
Shakespeare was very familiar with some of the most 
refined of the principles of the science of special 
pleading, a science which contains the quintessence of 
the law". 43. Mr. Heard mentions a species of 
traverse, used by special pleaders when the record was 



224 shaksp:ER not shakkspejare;. 

in lyatin, and known as a "special traverse", referred 
to in 2nd Henry IV, Act 5: "The subtlety of its text- 
ure and the total dearth of explanation in all the re- 
ports and treatises extant in the time of Shakespeare 
with respect to its principle, seems to justify the con- 
clusion that he must have attained a knowledge of it 
from actual practice." 43. A jury of lawyers would 
certainly find that such familiarity with law indicates 
deep study and long practice, and that by no pos- 
sibility could John Doe, coming as a half educated lad 
to lyondon,* attain it in a score of years under the 
most favorable conditions. 

As to the medical knowledge of the author of these 
plays. Dr. J. C. Bucknill, in "Psychology of Shake- 
speare", lyondon, 1859, says, that the author had 
"paid an amount of attention to subjects of medical 
interest scarcely, if at all, inferior to that which has 
served as the basis of the learned and ingenious argu- 
ment that this intellectual king of men had devoted 
seven good 3^ears of his life to the practice of law." 
He is "surprised and astonished at the extent and 
exactness of the physiological knowledge displayed" 
in these plays, and concluded that abnormal conditions 

® At a meeting of the Professional "Woman's League, held in 
New York, May, 1894, the New York Tribune reported that the 
question was debated: "Who wrote the works ascribed to 
Shakespeare", and able arguments in favor of Bacon and 
of player Shaksper were made. The defender of the player 
theory took the ground that the author was not Bacon, because 
Bacon was a lawyer, whereas "no more law is shown in the 
plays than could have been acquired by superficial reading." 
A good illustration of the "smattering", "hanging around the 
courts", and "picking up" theory. 



the; testimony of the; pl,ays. 225 

of mind had attracted Shakespeare's dihgent observa- 
tion, and had been his favorite study. 

He finds instances which amount "not merely to 
evidence but to proof, that Shakespeare had read 
widely in medical literature' ' . Dr. Field says : ' ' Shake- 
speare paid considerable attention to medicine, and 
has furnished some of the finest specimens of the 
medical character, that have ever been drawn by any 
writer. His Cerimon, in Pericles, is a most noble one. 
. . . Macbeth supplies us with a wise member of 
the profession. ... In I^ear also appears a phy- 
sician worthy of the name. The last scene of the 
4th Act shows his excellent skill in treating I^ear's 
case. Shakespeare 's maladies are many, and the 
symptoms very well defined. . . . Diseases of 
the nervous system seem to have been a favorite study, 
especially insanity, I^ear, Timon, and Hamlet being 
excellent examples.* "Medical Thoughts of Shake- 
peare," 1885. 

Sir Charles Bell, in "Principles of Surgery," II, 557, 
says: "My readers will smile to see me quoting 
Shakespeare among the physicians and theologists; 
but not one of all their tribe, populous though it be, 

*A letter in the New York Sun, of 13th Nov. 1898, quotes a 
St. Louis surgeon, "who has made a special study of Brain 
Surgery, thus: "Of course, Shakespeare remains supreme in 
his portraiture of one form of insanity. He was far in advance 
of the medical knowledge of his time. No modern alienist has 
ever presented Hamlet's type of mental disorder so accurately. 
So exact and comprehensive is this product of the insight of 
genius, that Maudsley prefers it to any other as the basis of a 
study — prefers it to Bsquirol's record of actual cases of lunacy 
in the Paris hospital for the insane". 



226 shakspe;r not shakespkar:^. 

could describe so exquisitely the marks of apoplexy, 
conspiring with, the struggles for life, and the agonies 
of suffocation to deform the countenance of the dead; 
so curiously does our poet present to our conception 
all the signs from which it might be inferred that the 
good Duke Humphrey had died a violent death. ' ' 

' 'And not only in the general knowledge of a lawyer 
and a physician, but what we call in these days 'medi- 
cal jurisprudence', the man who wrote the play of 
Henry VI seems to have been an expert' ' , according 
to David Paul Brown, the highest of authorities. 
Morgan, 215. The player Shaksper would fare no 
better in the hands of a jury of physicians, than of 
lawyers. 



The poet was not only a great poet, but "myriad 
minded' ' , and familiar with philosophy from Plato and 
Aristotle down, according to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 

Dr. Furnivall says of Gervinus' Studies of Shake- 
speare: "He sets before us his view of the poet and 
his works as a whole, and rightly claims for him the 
highest honor as the greatest dramatic artist, the rarest 
judge of men and human affairs, the noblest moral 
teacher that literature has yet known." 

Schlegel said of Shakespeare: "He unites in his 
soul the utmost elevation and the utmost depth; the 
world of spirits and nature have laid all their treasures 
at his feet; in strength a demi-god, in profundity of 
view a prophet, in all-seeing wisdom a guardian spirit 
of a higher order, he lowers himself to mortals as if 



THE) TESTIMONY OF THE) PI,AYS. 22/ 

unconscious of his superiority, and is as open and un- 
assuming as a child." 

"There is no quality in the human mind, there is no 
class of topics, there is no realm of thought, in which 
he has not soared or descended, and none in which he 
has not said the commanding word. All men are im- 
pressed, in proportion to their own advancement in 
thought, by the genius of Shakespeare; and the great- 
est mind values him most. ' ' R. W. Emerson. 

According to Mr. Ruggles, he was thoroughly fa- 
miliar with Bacon's Philosophy, and the aim of Mr. 
Ruggles valuable book is to prove this by an analysis 
of eleven of the plays. 

"The writer of these plays is generally thought of 
first as a poet, and then as a philosopher; but perhaps 
if he should be regarded as a philosopher first and 
then a poet, that is, a philosopher who used a creative 
imagination, and transcendent power of fancy and 
language for the purpose of clothing in poetical form 
the abstract principles of his science of man, we might 
give a nearer guess at his meaning." Ruggles, 159. 

"He was a man of bold and innovating genius in- 
deed who presumed to question the authority of 
Aristotle in either logic or art. But Bacon did the 
one and 'Shakespeare' did the other". Id., 1. c. 

"It is observable that in the illustrations of differ- 
ent branches of learning, the poet for the most part 
follows the divisions of the sciences laid down by 
Bacon, but not always, for he sometimes takes his 
rules from Aristotle, but this is apparently only 
in cases where Bacon is silent in the points involved." 
Id., Preface, 4. 



228 SHAKSPER NOT SHAK:eSPB)AR:S. 

"It SO happens that in the later plays, and particu- 
larly in those written toward the close of the drama- 
tist' s career, the apparent similitudes point not simply 
to the theoretical views, but to the system and techni- 
calities of the Baconian PhilOvSophy; they seem to 
reach the classification and subdivisions of the subject 
of which they treat." Id., Intro., 4. 

"The plan of Bacon's Natural History and its pecu- 
liar classification and nomenclature as well as its use in 
furnishing materials for induction, were of course en- 
tirely original with him; yet it is a singular fact that 
in Cymbeline, the topics of the play — and by topics is 
here meant "those general heads under which the dif- 
ferent subjects of the dialogue can be classified — 
coincide with the main heads and division of Bacon's 
plan of a History." ' lb. 45, 

"By the following analysis of the Winter's Tale it 
is intended to show that of the three leading divisions 
made by Bacon of L^earning into History, Poetry and 
Philosophy, the play illustrates Poetry as an art, and 
more particularly dramatic art as practiced by 'Shake- 
speare'. . . . This play is therefore the opposite 
and counterpart of Cymbeline; in which is represented 
the Method of Induction according to Bacon. " Id. , 86. 

"The foregoing summary ... is perhaps suf- 
ficient to show the similarity between Bacon's sug- 
gestions and the poet's practice". Id., 158. 

' 'Othello therefore apparently covers the whole ground 
of Bacon's doctrine of 'the platform or essence of good', 
and is a 'living model' which shows in its characters, 
their actions, thoughts, opinions, and sentiments, the 
practical application of abstract and scientific truths — 



THS TKSTIMONY OF THS PIvAYS. 229 

thus clothing the dry bones of philosophy with the 
flesh and blood of dramatic life." Id., 629. 

"Shakespeare's genius seems always conscious of its 
work and its methods, and although by no effort can 
we go under his fundamental conceptions, even if we 
have the good fortune of reaching them, yet the struc- 
ture of his pieces shows that these conceptions were ob- 
tained by study a7id meditation, a?id were the fruits of a 
mind that had fathomed to the bottom every subject of 
which it treats; consequently he could present such 
subjects with all their relations in plays which are the 
product of both art and philosophy. . . . His 
plays are not nature, nor copies of nature, nor in- 
tended to be such; but art, which makes its own 
world in imitation no doubt of nature, but with an 
intentional difference, and under artificial forms and 
arbitrary conditons." Id., 434. 

And Mr. Ruggles declares, p. 3, Introd., in effect 
his belief that there is some connection between the 
plays and the Baconian Philosophy, and that between 
Bacon and Shakespeare there existed some personal 
relation, "the nature of which, however, must be left 
to conjecture, since neither histor}^ nor tradition 
makes any mention of them." 

"(The play of Julius Caesar) shows that Shake- 
speare possessed the gift of eloquence to a degree that 
has never been equalled. Besides all else that it is, it 
is the play of poetic eloquence . . . the consum- 
mate power of oratory. There are no less than three 
deliberate orations in it, for besides those of Antony 
and Brutus, there is the splendid speech addressed by 
Marcellus to the rabble — a piece of invective as fine as 



230 shakspe;r not shakkspkar:©, 

anything of the kind in our literature. Antony's 
speech remains, of course, the greatest effort in per- 
suasive oratory ever penned. There is not a line in it 
which even Erskine — that angel- tongued persuader of 
juries — could have bettered." Spectator, (I,ondon) 
Jan. 29, 1898. 

Is it conceivable that William Shaksper, if he was 
possessed of the gift of eloquence, a gift which cannot 
be concealed, which is irrepressible, should not have 
employed it on many occasions, and that where there 
were ears to hear and eyes to see; that he should not 
have spoken one living word of any description; that 
not one contemporary should have discovered and re- 
marked upon his oratorical powers? Jonson enu- 
merated the eloquent men of his age, and specified one 
among them as surpassing all that Greece or Rome 
could boast. That should have been William Shak- 
sper, if he wrote the Shakespeare plaj^s, but Jonson 
had no such man in his view, and failed to mention 
Shaksper in the connection. On another day he did 
report this Shaksper as loquacious to a degree often 
laughable. Eloquence is one thing, and loquacity 
quite another. 

Goethe says: "He (Shakespeare) is not a theatrical 
poet; he never thought of the stage; it was too narrow 
for his great mind, nay, the whole visible world was 
too narrow. . . . He is a great psychologist, and 
we learn from his pieces the secrets of human 
nature. ' ' 

(On the other hand Halliwell-Phillipps, to suit the 
facts of the life and environment of player Shaksper, 
says, I, 114: "There is no evidence that Shaksper 



the; testimony of the; pi,ays. 231 

wrote at any period of his life without a constant 
reference to the immediate effect of his dramas upon 
the theatrical public of his own day; and it may 
reasonably be suspected that there is not one of them 
which is the result of an express or cherished literary 
design. ' ' Phillipps claims that it was the opinion of 
contemporaries of William Shaksper that he wrote the 
Plays "without effort and without design and by in- 
spiration' ' , and evidently is himself of the same way 
of thinking. That would mean that when he took a 
pen in hand, the words flowed from the nibs without 
intention or knowledge on his part; in other words he 
was a mere unconscious medium, through which some 
external agency manifested itself after the manner of 
the rapping spirits we have all heard of . ) " 

John Owens has written a book on "The Five 
Great Skeptical X)ramas of History", lyondon and 
New York, 1896; in which he treats of Hamlet; one 
of the five, that "wonderful tragedy". (In Tenny- 
son's opinion also, Hamlet is the greatest creation in 
literature. ) Owens finds no evidence of the play hav- 
ing been thrown off as a pot-boiler, or to fill William 
Shaksper' s theaters and pockets. "Shakespeare him- 
self is Hamlet. . . . Hamlet is a victim of in- 
finity, of thought and reflection so far enlarged that 
their sphere has become illimitable. He falls a prey 
first to his own genius for profound meditation, his 
subtilizing and refining instincts, his invincible prefer- 
ence for the ideal and abstract, as compared with the 
real and concrete". Can this be the uneducated youth 
of Halliwell-Phillipps, "almost devoid of accomplish- 
ments when he entered London", or the Shaksper of 



232 SHAKSPKR NOT shak:^spkare;. 

Rolfe and Fiske, who "had little lyatin, perhaps none", 
when a lack of I^atin was a lack of all education ? 

' 'A man of his profound thought, and vivid imagi- 
nation, must occasionally have made incursions, or at- 
tempted surveys of that mysterious and fathomless 
unknown by which our mundane existence is meta- 
physically as well as physically environed. He 
undoubtedly paid repeated visits to the shore of the 
ocean of transcendental being, ' ' etc. 

"He was a judicial, equilibrating, suspensive 
thinker. . . , He saw truth, reason, as well as 
the springs of human conduct. . . . This was the 
secret of what Coleridge terms his 'myriad-minded- 
ness', as well as of his intense humanity. . . . 
Philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, science — in 
short, all subject-matters of human concernment — are 
discussed by his characters. . . . All conceivable 
types of humanity Shakespeare has vivisected and de- 
scribed, and has well nigh exhausted the attributes of 
each." Can this be the man of whom Prof. "Wendell 
says: "Nothing more surprises such readers of Shake- 
speare as are not practical men of letters, than the 
man's apparent learning?" Also, can it be the same 
Shaksper who for twenty-five years went in and out 
before all that was worthless and vile of I^ondon ? 

' 'That Shakespeare was fully convinced of the gen- 
eral advantages of knowledge over ignorance, is a 
truth needing no demonstration; it is impressed on 
every page of his works. . . . Ignorance is a 
monster, and 'barbarous', 'dark', 'barren', 'unweigh- 
ing.' " Was this the Shaksper who for years left 



the; ti;stimony of the; pi.ays. 233 

wife and children to shift for themselves, and whose 
daughters grew up in illiteracy ? 

"Hamlet is before all things a thinker, a profoundly 
philosophic reasoner. . . . Shakespeare had evi- 
dently studied profoundly the Hamletic type of in- 
tellect. He had acquired his intimate knowledge of it 
just as Goethe had learned Faust, from introspection." 
Mr. Owens also says that the best Shakesperian critics 
seem now agreed that the earliest form of Hamlet, the 
1603 Quarto, was indited by William Shakespeare, 
possibly about 1585-7; which would be when Will- 
iam Shaksper was vending mutton from the tail of a 
cart. Strange occupation for a Hamletic type of in- 
tellect! 

"Goethe created Faust. . . . but this creation 
with all its excellence is entirely inferior in uniformity 
and artistic finish to all the highest products of the 
Shakespearean drama, e. g., Hamlet, Othello and 
Lear." True it is, as I have said before, the world is 
just now coming to comprehend the plays of Shake- 
speare. Surely they were never written for the 
amusement of the penny knaves who pestered the the- 
aters, as Richard Grant White and John Fiske seem 
to think, and as Charles Dudley Warner, "The 
People for Whom Shakespeare Wrote", fancies. 

And now comes Prof. B. B. Warner, of Tulane 
University, in his "English Historj^ in Shakespeare 
Plays", New York, 1895, p. 321; written to show 
that the author of these plays "understood English 
History as no other man has ever understood it, and 
has pictured it so, that in the words of S. T. Coleridge 



234 shakspe;r not shakkspkark. 

the people have taken their history from Shakespeare 
as they have taken their theology from Milton." 

'%ord Bacon exactly defines in this spirit the value 
of the historical drama, and hence the function of 
Shakespeare as a teacher of history. 'Dramatic poetry 
is like history made visible, and is an image of action 
past, as though they were present' ". (Is it not re- 
markable that so many of the scholars who are 
wandering in the forest of Arden should fancy they 
hear the footsteps of Francis Bacon!) 

' 'Heine fairly estimates and sums up the historical 
value of these plays: 'The great Briton is not only a 
poet but an historian; he wields not only the dagger 
of Melpomene, but the still sharper stylus of Clio. 
In this respect he is like the earliest writers of history, 
who also knew no difference between poetry and his- 
tory . . . but who enlivened truth with song, 
and in whose song was heard only the voice of 
truth.' " 

"So writing, Shakespeare taught history as it has 
never been taught since — not in tables, nor dates, nor 
statistics — nor in records of revolts or details of battle- 
fields; but history in its highest and purest form — the 
uncovering of those springs of action in which great 
natural movements take their rise. ' ' Strange that Mr. 
Warner should not see how utterly impossible it is that 
all this learning and philosophy should have come from 
Stratford. For myself, I believe that Mr. Warner's 
horse knows as much of history and philosophy as 
William Shaksper, player, theater-proprietor, and re- 
tired millionaire, ever knew. 



the; testimony of the pi.ays. 235 

He was a physicist and natural philosopher. "The 
diction of the play All's Well that Ends Well is largely 
infused with terms borrowed from mechanics, engineer- 
ing and military art." Ruggles, 322. 



Judge Madden, of Dublin, has written "A Study of 
Shakespeare and Elizabethan Sport", 1897, of which 
the Spectator, November 6, 1897, said that it shows 
that Shakespeare was "a past-master of the language 
of falconry. . . Hardly less curious than the innu- 
merable proofs of Shakespeare's accuracy in this 
matter are the cases adduced of inaccuracy in modern 
writers; as, for example, Scott and Tennyson." Now, 
falconry was peculiarly the sport of gentlemen, and 
what was a butcher boy and a tramp player to know 
of that matter ? It is one more proof that William 
Shaksper, of Stratford, was not the William Shake- 
speare of these plaj^s. 



The writer of these plays was also an adept in the 
science of Heraldry. Greene, "Shakespeare and the 
Emblem Writers' ' , says: "It is to be accepted as a fact 
that he was acquainted with the works of the emblem 
writers, and profited so much from them, as to be able, 
whenever the occasion demanded, to invent, and most 
fittingly illustrate, devices of his own; as, for example, 
the sixth knight' s device and the motto in Pericles; 
and in the casket scene of the Merchant of Venice" . 
Reed, 261. Do we go to circus clowns for instruction 
in Heraldry? 



236 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. 

He was an enthusiast in horticulture. In fact, 
"there is nothing in history or politics, nothing in art 
or science, nothing in physics or metaphysics, that is 
not sooner or later taxed for his illustration. What- 
ever we have gathered of thought or knowledge and 
of experience, confronted with his marvelous page, 
shrinks to a mere foot-note." Lowell, 170. Yet John 
Fiske, for the life of him, cannot see that the Shake- 
speare plays "abound with evidences of scholarship 
or learning of the sort that is gathered from profound 
and accurate study of books. ' ' He cannot indeed, and 
therein plainly differs from I^owell. 

Mr. Edward W. Naylor has written ' 'Shakespeare and 
Music", (The Temple Shakespeare Manuals), 1896, 
showing that the writer of the plays was familiar with 
the popular music of his time, and an adept in the sci- 
ence of music. "It is scarcely a matter of surprise that 
the musical student should look to Shakespeare for 
music, and find it treated of from several points of 
view, completely and accurately." In Elizabeth's 
time, music formed a part of every gentleman' s educa- 
tion. "In the 1 6th and 17th centuries, a practical 
acquaintance with music was a regular part of the ed- 
ucation of both sovereign, gentlemen of rank, and the 
higher middle class". . . . "In Elizabeth's reign, 
it was the custom of a lady's guests to sing unaccom- 
panied music from 'parts' after supper, and the inabil- 
ity to take a 'part' was liable to remark from the rest 
of the company; and, indeed, such inability cast doubt 
on the person's having any title to education at all." 
. "It is plain that Shakespeare's gentlemen 
were able to sing from the printed page ( 'prick song' ) 



Th:^ I^E^STIMONY OF I'H]^ PI^AYS. 237 

as well as to 'descant' , that is, to improvise a counter- 
point on a given melody; that he was famiHar with 
the construction and the manipulation of the musical 
instruments commonly used in his day, (the cornet, 
the tabor-pipe, the recorder, the viol and lute, the vir- 
ginal) ; and he knew the characteristics of the dances 
which were then in vogue. " Notice of "Shakespeare 
and Music", in New York Tribune, June i6th, 1896. 
By all which, it appears that the writer of the plays 
was educated in music as became a gentleman of rank, 
or one of the higher middle class. 

He had traveled extensively in France and Italy. 
The scene of his first play, lyove's I/abour's Lost, is 
laid in southern France. No one can explore Venice, 
Padua, Verona, Milan, and other Italian cities, with 
the plays in hand, and not feel assured that the writer 
or writers who were concealed under the name "Will- 
iam Shakespeare" had been in these cities, and knew 
them as only a resident could. "So strange and so 
strong is the power of fiction over truth, in Venice, 
as everywhere else, that Portia, Emilia, Cassio, An- 
tonio, and lago, appear to have been more real here 
(z. e., to the traveler in Venice) than of the men and 
women of real life. It is a curious fact, reported by 
F. K. Klze, and quoted by Mr. H. H. Furness, in his 
Appendix to the Merchant of Venice, that at the 
time of the action of that drama, Shakespeare's own 
day, there was living in Padua a Professor of the 
University, whose characteristics fully and entirely 
corresponded with all the qualities of 'old Bellario', 
with all the requisites of the play". Lawrence Hut- 
ton, in Harper's Magazine, July, 1896. 



238 shak:sp^r not shakkspeare;. 

Mrs. Dall says, p. 35: "My own conviction is, that 
lie spent the period between 1587 and 1592, after some 
apprenticeship at the theater, chiefly on the continent. 
This conviction is founded on the internal evidence of 
the plays." 

George A. Sala, in his I^ife and Adventures, writes: 
"Wandering from Milan to Mantua, and from Padua 
to Verona, and Vicenza, there grew up in me, day 
after day, a stronger and stronger impression — an im- 
pression that has become unalterable conviction — that 
Shakespeare knew every rood of ground, and every 
building in the cities in which he had laid the scenes 
of the Merchant of Venice, The Two Gentlemen of 
Verona, of Romeo and Juliet, and of the Taming of 
the Shrew. ... It was the constant study of 
ostensibly petty details in Shakespeare's Italian plays 
that led me to the full and fast belief that he was fa- 
miliar from actual experience and observation with the 
northern Italy of his time. ' ' 

George Brandes' Critical Study of Shakespeare, 
1898, finds abundant evidence in the plays that the 
author had traveled in Italy and elsewhere. 

In the Contemporary Review, Jan., 1896, is a paper 
byJanStefansson, entitled "Shakespeare at Elsinore", 
in which the writer ' 'wishes to point out that the au- 
thor of Hamlet shows in this drama a correct knowl- 
edge of Danish names, words, and customs of his 
time — nay, a local knowledge of the royal castle of 
Elsinore, which he could not have derived from books, 
and which can only be satisfactorily accounted for by 
assuming: 



the; TE^S'TIMONY OI^ TH!^ PtAYS. 239 

1. That Shakespeare himself saw what he de- 
scribed, or 

2. That he was told of it by others, who had been 
at Klsinore, and seen the interior of the castle. 

He goes on: "I shall now proceed to show that the 
writer of Act III, scene 4, of Hamlet, had, it seems, 
a local knowledge of a room in this famous castle' ' , 
and he goes on to show ihe portraits of the kings upon 
the tapestry. . . . ' 'Shakespeare shows a knowl- 
edge of Danish customs, not generally possessed by 
Englishmen of his time. . . . Shakespeare, all 
through Hamlet, again and again recurs to the Danish 
custom of drinking 'cannon healths' " — peculiarly a 
Danish custom. Every time the king drinks, guns are 
fired. The story of Hamlet was first told by Saxo 
Grammaticus, in his history of Denmark, written A. ■ 
D. 1 180-1200. The story was translated into French 
and reprinted in Paris, 1514, in Belleforest's 'Histories 
Tragiques', 1570. We know of no other source from 
which Shakespeare could have borrowed the story. . . 
Shakespeare changes the name in Belleforest's Ham- 
let, to make them Danish, introduces new Danish 
names. . . . He introduces the names of two 
courtiers, Rosencrantz and Guilderstern, neither of 
which is found in Belleforest" , — ^names which belong 
to the most powerful and respected families of the 
Danish nobility. ... At the beginning of Act 
II, scene i, Polonius asks Regnaldo: "Inquire me first 
what Danskers dre in Paris". Dansker is a Danish 
word and means a Dane. The word occurs nowhere 
else in the whole range of English literature, but in 
this passage. ( Teste, the New English Dictionary, D, 



240 shakspe;r not shakespbjar:^. 

Oxford, 1894.) But Dansk, and Danske, (Dan- 
ish) are wrongly and indiscriminately used by all 
other writers for the people or the country, or 
as adjectives, as far back as 1578. It is cer- 
tainly striking that Shakespeare should use a Dan- 
ish word, not used by any one else, correctly, 
both as regards meaning and grammar, while all his 
contemporaries, in both respects, are floundering 
hopelessly about the same word in its adjectival form. 
. Whence did Shakespeare derive his knowl- 
edge of a room in Kronberg Castle, of Danish names 
and customs, and other matters, a knowledge so accu- 
rate that he uses correctly Danish names, which 
everyone else in England used in a wrong form, and 
meaning? . . . It is a sheer impossibility that 
Shakespeare could have got knowledge of the kind 
described from any books, at that time in England, 
which have come down to us. The question at issue 
would then seem to be narrowed down to this — did 
he or did he not, go with his fellow actors to Elsi- 
nore?" 

In 1585, some English actors appear to have been in 
Denmark, and they went from Denmark to Germany, 
1586, and left Dresden, 1587. "In a passport issued 
in Ivondon, 1591, only four members of Sackville's 
companj^ are mentioned as going to Germany, though 
we find later there eighteen. . . . By the pass- 
port we see that English actors went abroad to 'per- 
form music, feats of agility, and the games of comedies, 
tragedies, histories'. Every actor consequently was 
more or less of a jesting -playeT, and we see from Stowe 
that Leicester had pantomimes, dancing, and vaulting, 



'THE) TE^STIMONY OF THK PLAYS. 24I 

at Utreclit, to the great delight of the Dutch. We 
may take it then that the EngHsh actors in Denmark, 
in 1586, were some of I^eicester's players bent on seek- 
ing their fortunes abroad. ' ' 

Mr. Stefansson, finding that three or four players, 
who were afterwards connected with the Globe the- 
ater, (Kempe, etc. ) were with Leicester in Holland, 
("we know that these men had been in Leicester's 
service and gone to Denmark in 1586") goes on to say 
"It is a legitimate ijiference that Shakespeare probably 
joined them under Leicester. In fact J. P. Collier proved 
it by a document which he forged.'' I have elsewhere 
had occasion to remark on the forgeries which spring 
up in all directons, in order to bolster up the claims of 
the strolling player Shaksper, and to the strange fact 
that half the Shakespeare commentators charge the 
other half with frauds of every description. But why 
Stefansson should lug in Collier's forged document 
here, I fail to see. He closes thus: "Bearing in 
mind the striking knowledge of matters Danish shown 
in Hamlet, and viewing it in the light of the fact 
given above as to Shakespeare and his earliest fellow 
actors and friends, in whose companj^ he seems to have 
entered upon his theatrical course", (all guesswork 
and assumption); "his visit with them to Blsinore 
may be safely located in the region that lies between 
probability and certainty. How near to either these 
must be individual opinion, but part of the Danish 
knowledge in Hamlet can, it seems, only thus be ex- 
plained." 

Halliwell-Phillipps brings William Shaksper to Lon- 
don, either in 1585, or 15S6, (Fleay holds that it was 



242 SHAKSPEiR NOT SHAK:eSPE;ARBj. 

in 1587), and lie tells us that his first employment was 
very mean, and that after awhile he got to be a serv- 
itour in the theater. Also he tells us that the youth, 
at that time, must have been all but destitute of 
polished accomplishments. R. G. White says that 
we may be sure that up to his flight, he had 
never seen half a dozen books other than his horn 
book, his I^atin Accidence (a primary reader), and a 
Bible. Mr. Phillipps further tells us, that nothing had 
been discovered respecting the history of Shaksper's 
theatrical life, and that it is all but impossible that he 
should not by 1587 have already commenced his provin- 
cial tours; and that, for the next five years, 1587-1592, 
there is not a particle of evidence respecting his ca- 
reer — not one word said about him, in fact, which has 
come down to us. If therefore, William Shaksper got 
to Klsinore in 1586, it was just after he reached I,on- 
don, according to Halli well- Phillipps, or while he was 
purveying as a butcher at Stratford, according to 
Fleay — and anyway while he was an illiterate clown. 
The Klsinore theory may then be dismissed. That the 
writer of Hamlet was at Klsinore, however, is not so 
improbable, but if so, as an ambassador, or in political 
employment. He showed the same knowledge of lan- 
guage, customs, manners, and places of Italy, France, 
Scotland, as of Denmark, and was not merely a trav- 
eller, but a man of education, capable of appreciating 
and making use of what he learned in his travels. He 
certainly was not an apprentice, fresh from the coun- 
try, among a rabble of buffoons, fiddlers, tumblers 
and players. To hold that any man, unlearned, or 
learned, 'can have a correct knowledge of foreign Ian- 



tun TBJSI'IMONY Olf TH:^ PI,AYS. 243 

guages, manners, customs and places by intuition, is 
nonsense. To suppose that such a man could sit down 
and write Hamlet by inspiration and not by design — 
or by design either — is also nonsense. And yet, if 
Shaksper did write Hamlet, that was the only way he 
could have written it. I myself prefer to look for a 
cause adequate to the effect, and will not stand gap- 
ing in wonder at a phenomenon for which there was 
never a cause. 



It is manifest that the writer of these plays was in- 
timately acquainted with the French, Italian and Span- 
ish languages, able to speak as well as read them. A 
large part of Henry Vis in French — ^whole scenes; and 
the plots of many of the plays were borrowed from 
then untranslated Italian and Spanish novels. 

Prof. Meiklejohn, 372, says: "The modern English- 
men not only speak Shakespeare, but think Shake- 
speare. His knowledge of human nature has enabled 
him to throw into English literature a larger number 
of genuine 'characters,' that will always live in the 
thoughts of men, than any other author that ever 
wrote. And he has not drawn his characters from 
England alone, and from his own time — ^but from 
Greece and Rome, from other countries too, and also 
from all ages. He has written in a greater variety of 
styles than any other writer. 'Shakespeare', says 
Professor Craik, 'has invented twenty styles'. The 
knowledge, too, that he shows on every kind of hu- 
man endeavor is as accurate as it is varied. Lawyers 
say that he was a great lawyer; theologians, that he 



244 SHAKSPER not SHAKKSPljARE^. 

was an able divine, and unequalled in his knowledge 
of the Bible; printers, that he must have been a 
printer; and seamen, that he knew every branch of the 
sailor' s craft. ' ' 



He was familiar with courts and princes, as only a 
man could be who had passed his life in such an at- 
mosphere. Every one of these branches of knowl- 
edge, or these experiences, declares the writer of the 
plays to have been an altogether different man from 
the player Shaksper. 

As will be seen hereafter, there is a school of Shak- 
pereans who strive to lower the poems and plays to 
the level of the illiterate player William Shaksper, be- 
ing unable, professedly, to discover in these works 
traces of study or learning. The man they say was 
a natural wit, without cultivation; he sang as a bird 
sings — like Shelley's skylark, "in profuse strains of 
unpremeditated art". To be sure, he had picked up a 
little knowledge after he reached I^ondon. He had at 
no time but a smattering, however, and by consorting 
with servants and retainers of great houses, he came 
to have that acquaintance with the manners of princes 
and nobles of which his works give evidence. That 
sort of depreciation neither helps the player nor be- 
clouds the author. As for the latter, Samuel Taylor 
Coledridge exclaims: "Merciful, wonder-making 
Heaven! — What a man was this Shakespeare ! Myr- 
iad-minded, indeed, he was!" 

The absurdity and impertinence of the assumption 
that the female characters of these plays, Katharine 



THK TESTIMONY OF THE PI^AYS. 245 

and Constance, Hermione and Perdita, Juliet and 
Rosalind, Imogene and Beatrice, Miranda and Desde- 
mona, and the hundred others, could have sprung 
from the consciousness of a Warwickshire clown, is 
inconceivable. 

Look at one of these characters, Miranda, in the 
Tempest, "so perfect, so peerless; unsullied purity of 
mind and tenderest compassion form this exquisite 
creation. Her every thought is innocent and pure, 
unmixed with baser matter. There is no stain of 
earth upon her. She is the rare consummate flower 
of the highest culture, impossible to be found, no 
doubt, on this earth, but blooming in matchless beauty 
in the ideal world of Shakspeare." Ruggles, 674. 

' 'The exquisite Miranda belongs to the highest ideal 
from her position and education, but her very noblest 
attributes are those of womanhood." Charles Knight. 

Will any man venture to say that this wonderful 
creation sprung from the brain of a rollicking, disso- 
lute strolling player, a man who knew not what com- 
passion was, as the records of the courts show, who 
could not have had the faintest conception of purity 
of mind, any more than culture. A female character 
from the hand of player Shaksper would have had a 
great deal of the "stain of earth upon her". Doll 
Tear-sheet, or Wapping Sal, would have filled the bill 
exactly. All experience teaches that water cannot 
rise higher than its source. The player's mother and 
wife being such persons as described by Phillipps, not 
one whit higher than milk maids, how was it possible 
that he could have known anything of female delicacy 
and refinement, and of what constitutes a gentle- 



246 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. 

woman, before he fled to lyondon ? And we may be 
very sure that the sort of women he consorted with 
after he came to lyondon were neither princesses nor 
ladies. 

Players were vagabonds, social pariahs (deemed, 
says Dr. Ingleby, sans aveu, to be run-a-ways and 
vagabonds), and the probability that any man of 
standing, gentleman or nobleman, would invite one 
of them to dinner, or to introduce them to his wife 
and daughters, is very small indeed. Hence, there 
is not the slightest written evidence in the letters, 
diaries, or gossip of that day, that player or manager 
Shaksper was ever seen within any gentleman's house, 
or was anywhere received as an equal or as a comrade, 
by the better sort of people. 

Yet, Dr. Brandes, in his Critical Studies, can talk 
of William Shaksper, of Stratford, in this way: "The 
great ladies of that day were extremely accomplished. 
They had been educated as highly as the men, spoke 
Italian, French and Spanish fluently, and were not un- 
frequently acquainted with lyatin and Greek. Lady 
Pembroke, Sidney's sister, the mother of Shakespeare's 
(Shaksper' s) patron, was regarded as the most intel- 
lectual woman of her time. ... So that we can 
easily understand how a daring, highbred woman of 
intelligence should have been for years the object 
which it most delighted Shakespeare (Shaksper) to 
portray." Dr. Brandes has found enough in the 
poems and plays of "Shakespeare" to enable him to 
write 600 pages to tell of it, and all that he finds he 
lays at the feet of the player, regardless of fact or 
history. "In the two volumes not a single new fact 



the; testimony of th:s pi.ays. 247 

has been added to the records of Shakespeare's life; 
the reader would be disappointed, but not surprised, 
to discover that not a single new fact had been added 
to the records of the poet's life; he would look eageirly 
for any addition to our knowledge of Shakespeare's 
personal character, of his relation to his contempo- 
raries, of his attitude towards the events of his time, 
of his studies, of the influence exercised on him by 
those studies and by his surroundings, and he would 
be indulgent if he found merely a recapitulation of 
what has long been before the world. . . . We laid 
the book down with more disappointment than we can 
express." Literature, March 12, 1898. 

The book is another effort, like that of Dr. Baynes, 
to construct a living Shakespeare from the Shake- 
speare poems and plays, and the more excellent the con- 
struction the more unlike it is to William Shaksper, 
of Stratford, of whom Halliwell-Phillipps wrote the 
biography. 

It follows that some other head conceived, some 
other hand delineated the female characters of these 
plays. Whoever wrote them was a gentleman as 
well as of the highest culture. In Rosetti's "Famous 
Poets", 41, we read: "Shakespeare, it may be abun- 
dantly inferred from his writings, always accounted 
himself a gentleman by birth and breeding, and the 
associates of his choice were gentlemen." Thus it is: 
every characteristic of the author of these plays, dis- 
covered in the plays, pushes the Stratford man farther 
down the horizon. 

I should not omit to say here that it is Dr. Wallace 
who^ accounts for the poet's intimate knowledge of 



248 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKEJSPKARB;. 

high Hfe in this way: "The lordly castles of War- 
wick and Kenilworth were within half a dozen miles 
of Stratford, and at times of festivity such castles 
were open houses, and at all times would be easily 
accessible through the friendship of servants and re- 
tainers, and thus might have been acquired some 
portion of that knowledge of the manners and speech 
of nobles and kings which appear in the historical 
plays. ' ' 

Uncaused phenomena have no play in the scheme of 
nature; "nothing comes to pass without a cause, and 
a cause proportionable and agreeable to the effect. ' ' 
If a man at twenty-five puts forth poems or plays 
steeped in classical learning; if the I<atin language is 
amalgamated and consubstantiated with his native 
thought; if his acquaintance with the English lan- 
guage, and the skill with which he uses that language, 
is phenomenal; the effect must have had a cause pro- 
portionable, and that cause was early instruction by 
competent masters, and labor and incessant study for 
years. If the works display an intimate knowledge 
of the usages of polite society, the effect could have 
but one cause— the author must have had good breed- 
ing in his youth. If the works display a minute 
knowledge of the manners and customs of a foreign 
country, with mention of persons and places, at a time 
when there were no itineraries or guide-books, such 
knowledge could have been gained only by residence 
or travel in said country. If the works discover an 
intimate knowledge of the science of law, and a fa- 
miliarity with the rules of pleading, the cause of this 
effect was study and practice in law, and for a long 



the; testimony of thk pi,ays. 249 

period. If the works evince a profound acquaintance 
with philosophy, ancient and modern, the cause of 
this effect was not intuition or inspiration, but study 
and meditation in seclusion. Where in the life of 
William Shaksper is to be found a cause proportion- 
able to any one of these effects, much more causes 
proportionable to them all combined ? 

It makes no difference who did write the plays, in 
the present argument; the point is, that William Shak- 
sper, the Stratford butcher, later player, did not. 
When so improbable a statement is made, as that he, 
whose antecedents we have given, wrote these poems 
and plays, in the words of Prof. Huxley on statements 
no more improbable, "We not only have a right to de- 
mand, but we are morally bound to require, strong 
evidence in its favor before we even take it into con- 
sideration. ' ' 

What is the evidence ? Simply that during a period 
of nine or ten years, certain plays — a long series of 
them — and successive editions of them — were pub- 
lished anonymously, and no one gave sign that he 
knew the authors; that ten years after one of them 
(ly. L. I/.) had first been performed, a new edition of 
it appeared bearing the name of "William Shakespere" 
as the reviser and augmenter; that new editions of 
some other plays subsequently appeared under the 
name of William Shake-speare, or Shakespeare; that 
at the same time new plays apparently by the same 
authors, and editions of the old ones, continued to 
issue anonymously; that thirty-five 5^ears after the 
first play of the series had been put on the stage, and 
twenty-five years after the name Shakespeare first ap- 



250 SHAKSPER NOT SHAK^SPKARE. 

peared on a printed play, what is called the First Folio, 
comprising the "collected plays of William Shake- 
speare" was published by a syndicate of printers, not 
improbably with the cooperation of one or more of 
the authors, at the time living, because information 
seems to have been furnished the printers which only 
an author can be supposed to have given, as to which 
among the many plays, genuine and spurious, were 
really those of "Shakespeare"; also and more par- 
ticularly because revised and enlarged copies of the 
old plays were then contributed toward making the 
collection a complete one; that a persistent effort was 
made by the printers, who had sole control of the 
volume, and the right as well as the power to do what 
they pleased respecting it, even to attributing it to 
whom they pleased, to impress upon the public that 
the unknown "Shakespeare" was but another name 
for one Shaksper, or Shahkspair, as Furnivall says 
the man's name was pronounced, recently a proprietor 
of one of the I^ondon theaters, who had retired from 
business a very rich man; that the publication excited 
little interest at the time, or for three-score years after- 
wards, during which period the last surviving author 
of these plays had passed away, and made no sign, 
as also had the printers and everybody who had any 
knowledge of the subject-matter; that no one in the 
literary world knew or had known this Shaksper, 
where he came from, what were his antecedents, or 
what his life in I^ondon had been, except that he was 
said to have been a player and parj: owner of one of 
the public theaters; that whether he was the author of 
the Shakespeare plays was nobodys care and nobodys 



the; testimony op thk pi.ays. 251 

business, for no one thought the plays worth talking 
about, or better than the work of other play-wrights. 
This is so, for Dr. Ingleby assures us that for a full 
hundred years after the first of these plays appeared, 
no one thought their author to be sui generis. He 
is also obliged to confess that the suppositious author 
was unknown to the men of that age, because, after 
the most diligent search through all contemporary 
books, and accessible letters, diaries, note-books, he 
finds the man mentioned but three or four times, while 
he lived, and then as a player merely, never as a 
writer or an author. This being the state of things, 
it is not surprising that as the years went on, what was 
at first a lie came to be accepted as the truth, until 
finally what was purely mythical in the beginning 
came to be a part of the religion of the Knglish race. 
To be sure the Doctor brings in all the mentions of the 
works, even the most distant allusions, and transfers 
them in bulk to his Shaksper. But an examination 
easily shows which are references to the player man, and 
which to the works he did not write. Some years 
after the death of Shaksper, two or three persons who 
had known him left some mention of him; and one of 
them is contained in certain elegiac verses prefixed to 
the First Folio, entitled "To my Beloved, Mr. William 
Shakespeare, and what he hath left us," written as 
Shaksper' s modern admirers hold, in glowing and ap- 
preciative eulogy, — but certainly in ridicule of the 
player. All the reputation of William Shaksper as 
the author of the works of William Shakespeare rests 
on a string of verses that are mocking and malicious, 
as I shall presently show. There is not a tittle be- 



252 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPKARK. 

yond this in his favor. So long as nothing was known 
of the Stratford man, there seemed no improbabihty 
in the assumption that he was the author; but at 
length arose careful investigators, as Halliwell-Phil- 
lipps and Dr. Ingleby, and all contemporary literature 
and records were searched for items in the history of 
WilHam Shaksper, with the unforeseen result that the 
present generation knows the man altogether too well. 
They know the kind of people he came from, his 
bringing up, the sort of schooling he had, if he had 
any, the sort of handwriting he acquired, if he ever 
learned to write at all, of his apprenticeship to a 
butcher; his habits and associates, his flight from 
Stratford, and the occupation he followed in I^ondon, 
varied with trading and money getting; all and every 
one of these conditions and pursuits fatal to any lit- 
erary achievement whatever. The man made a heap 
of money, and that was the sole outcome of his fifty- 
odd years' life-work. While he lived, he was known 
to no one as a poet or playwright; indeed his hand- 
writing, as well as his illiteracy, forbade that, and 
any reputation he has now in that direction is wholly 
mythical. The labors of the two investigators named 
have stripped off his borrowed plumes, and left him 
an obscure and uninteresting mortal. No one during 
his lifetime testified in verse or prose, or in any sort of 
writing that has come to us, Ingleby being witness, 
that William Shaksper, of Stratford-on-Avon, wrote 
poems or plays. "Allusions to his works will be found 
collected in Dr. Ingleby 's Centurie of Prayse; but 
they consist almost entirely of slight references to his 
published works, and have no bearing of importance 



the; tejstimony op thi; pi,ays. 253 

on his career. Neither as addressed to him by others, 
nor by him to others, do any commendatory verses 
exist in connection with his or other men's works pub- 
lished in his lifetime" . Fleay, 73. 

He is represented fifty times as a man of business, 
engaged in piling up his ducats by a great variety of 
occupations, and is also known as a player, manager, 
and part proprietor of a public theater; but no one 
while he lived said that he wrote plays for that thea- 
ter, or wrote plays or poems at all. No one said he 
had ever seen him with a book or pen in his hand, or 
heard him speak of writing plays. No one testified 
that he was engaged, or thought to be engaged, about 
any literary matter whatever. He was running a 
theater, and getting, as he could, interludes, or shows, 
or spectacles, wherewith to amuse an audience of illit- 
erate and ignorant people. While he was so connected 
with the theater, certain plays issued from the press 
for years anonymously, but at length some of them 
bore the name "William Shakespeare", a name when 
spoken having but a distant resemblance to his own. 
He called himself in his youth Shagsper, and his 
father had gone by forty variations of the name 
Shaksper — Shaxper, Shacksper, Shaxberd, etc., etc. 
I^ater, in London, he signed his name (or it was 
signed for him, with his consent) to a deed and mort- 
gage, Shakspar, and Shaksper; and finally, at Strat- 
ford, to his last Will, three times, Shaksper. The reg- 
istry of his burial at Stratford made him Shakspere, 
according to Phillipps, but instead of the terminal 
letters r<?, it is probably the German r, and so Shak- 
sper. ' 



254 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPKARE. 

Scenes from, or skeletons of, some of these plays 
may have been given at this man's theater, and it is 
not improbable that some outsiders, knowing nothing 
of player Shaksper personally or historically — for as 
Ingleby tells us ' 'he was unknown to the men of that 
age' ' — and knowing nothing of William Shakespeare, 
the author of the plays, may have supposed player and 
author the same individual. But no one said so. It 
is a surmise at best. John Manningham, who told a 
story about player Shaksper, calls him Shakespeare 
(Ingleby, 45), and John Davies (86) speaks of him as 
a player ("Hadst thou not played some kingly parts," 
etc.) under the name of Shakespeare. If either of 
these men thought he was the William Shakespeare 
who was writing the plays, he did not sa}^ so. Both 
Manningham and Davies spoke of him as a player. 
There is nothing, up to the player's death, that im- 
plies that anyone thought player and author the same 
individual. After his death, two or three men who 
had known him assured the world that this man was 
the real author, but they gave their testimony under 
very suspicious circumstances. 

It would appear that the player applied for a grant 
of coat-armour for his father under the name of 
"Shakspere", (his profession making it impossible 
that such right should be granted to himself) , insinu- 
ating that his ancestors had been fierce in battle, and 
had shaken spears as well as other folk — and Shaksper 
or Shahkspair (John Peter) was a name to slough off 
if coat-armour was in question, and William was to 
be metamorphosed into a gentleman. 

When John Shaksper came to be buried, his name 



the; testimony of the pi,ays. 255 

was written in the Stratford Churcli Register (where 
it can be seen to-day) Shakspeare; and later, his wife, 
as Mrs. Shakspeare, (not Shakespeare — they all stick 
to the Shak). William Shaksper was entered in the 
same book. It is conceivable that the name Shake- 
speare, in the last years of his player or manager life 
came to attach to him, first as a joke and then as a 
custom, and that he was known to his fellows in lyon- 
don as Shakespeare, as often as Shaksper. The player 
may have come to pose as the true and only Shake- 
speare. This, however, is all guess-work, for there is 
no evidence one way or other. 



PART II 



RKFEIREINCKS TO shak:esp:karej. 259 



CHAPTER X. 

RBI^ERBNCBS TO SHAKESPEARE, AUTHOR OR 
WORKS, OR TO THE MAN FROM STRATFORD-ON- 
AVON, THE PLAYER SHAKSPER OR SHAKSPERE. 

The references or allusions to, and mentions of, 
Shakespeare, author or works, or player Shaksper, di- 
rect or indirect, between 1592 and 1616, the date of 
the pla^^er's death, and between 161 6 and 1692, in 
contemporary literature, were carefully collected by 
Dr. Ingleby, and published in the "Centurie of 
Prayse", 1874. This contained 228 references. In 
1879, Miss lyucy Toulmin Smith, by request, and with 
the approval, of Dr. Ingleby, edited the second edition, 
in which the references were brought up to 356 for the 
one hundred years. Miss Smith, in the preface says, 
however, that a re-examination renders 25 of Dr. 
Ingleby' s 228 references doubtful, and to each of 
these she has aflEixed an asterisk of warning for the 
reader's benefit. Rejecting the 25 spoken of — because 
if they are doubtful, they are valueless in this case — 
that makes, according to Ingleby and Smith, about 
three mentions per year of Shakespeare, author or 
works, or references to works, for the one hundred 
years. 

Between 1592 and 16 16, the number of allusions is 
121. On examining them carefully, I find the follow- 
ing state of things: — 

I. .There are but three concerning the player, viz; 



26o SHAKSPJSR NOT SHAKi;SP:eARE;. 

45, 67, 94, — possibly two others, 58 and 89. None of 
liim as an author. 

2. To the individual who wrote the plays, "William 
Shakespeare", none that are personal. 

3. To "Shakespeare", author of poems or plays, or 
both, nine: 6, 16, 26, 30, 48, 64, 71, 76, 106 — not one 
of them implying a personal acquaintance with this 
author. 

4. "Shakespeare" enumerated among other poets, 
nine: 20, 21, 56, 59, 63, 91, 100, 108, iii.* 

5. To one or other poem without mention of Shake- 
speare's name, seven: 13, 14, 17, 32, 33, 57, 75. 

6. To one or other play without mention of name of 
"Shakespeare", thirty: 25, 27, 29, 31, 38, 40, 41, 47, 
50, 52, 60, 62, 66, 72, 73, 74, 77, 79, 85, 90, 95, 97, 
loi, 102, 103, 105, 114, 115, 117, 118. 

7. I reject some of the so-called allusions because 
there is no evidence that they refer either to Shake- 
speare or the Shakespeare poems: i, 7, 44, 53, 55, 
86, 98. 

8. I also reject sixteen because it is not certain that 
a Shakespeare play is referred to at all: 5, 12, 19, 35, 
36, 42, 57, 60, 69, 78, 82, 93, 107, 109, 112, 113. 

One of the allusions to Shakespeare which I have 
credited to him as author of the poems, viz: 30, speaks 
of the Venus and Adonis and also of Hamlet: G. 
Harvey, "1598, or after 1600". This was from "a 
manuscript note in Speght's Chaucer, now lost; first 
printed in Johnson and Steevens' Shakespeare, 1773". 

* Every mention of "Shakespeare" is included within the 18 
references here specified in paragraphs 3 and 4. 



re^fe;re;nc:^s "to shakeSpkarb;. 261 

' 'The younger sort take much delight in Shakespeare's 
Venus and Adonis; but his IvUcrece, and his tragedy 
of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, have it in them to 
please the wiser sort, 1598." Malone, who saw the 
volume, doubted whether the note was written by 
Harvey before 1600, and consequently Ingleby has 
added the date 1600 with a query. Now the first 
Quarto of Hamlet was printed in 1603; was entered 
in the Stationer's Register, 26 July, 1602, and Fleay 
thinks it was first played in 1601. He says of this 
first Quarto: "This form of Hamlet seems to have 
been an unfinished refashioning of the old play of 
Kyd that had so long been performed by the Cham- 
berlain's men", p. 229. At best then, Harvey's refer- 
ence to Hamlet is based on the supposition that the 
author of lyUcrece, whoever he might be, had edited 
the new edition of Kyd's Hamlet. 

There is but one reference to any author during the 
twenty-four years which shows that the writer thought 
that the author of the poems, to-wit, William Shake- 
speare, had also written plays. Francis Meres, 1598, 
the same year in which an edition of Love's lyabour 's 
Lost first exhibited the name of William Shakespeare 
on the title page of a play, was apparently led to con- 
jecture that several plays, which for the last years 
had been performed or published anonymously were 
by the same author. He was partly right, but in the 
greater part wrong. 

Dr. Frederick J. Fumivall, in 1886, published what 
was announced to be a work supplementary to Ingle- 
by' s, entitled "Some 300 Fresh Allusions to Shakspere 
from 1594 to 1694." From 1594 to 161 6, there are 



262 SHAKSPEJR NOT SHAElESPEARjg. 

53 so-called allusions to Shakespeare, author or 
works — none to the player (Shaksper) — none of them 
expressing or implying an acquaintance with the au- 
thor — many of them doubtful, many indefinite; the 
larger part introduced as "echoes of", "resemblances 
to", "recollections of", "seems to be taken from", 
seem to be copying Shakspere", "may have had in 
mind", "conjecturally an allusion to", "in all proba- 
bility borrowed from", "quoted rather as illustrations 
than recollections of", sounds like", "an expansion of 
a line in", "had an eye on the well-known passage", 
"a suggestion of the words of", "perhaps found on". 
Some mention or allude to Venus and Adonis, some 
allude — usually remotely — to one play or other; none 
have anything to say of Shakespeare, author, except 
that the writer of the Returne from Parnassus, 1600, 
whom Ingleby had already quoted, p. 12, made one of 
the interlocutors exclaim, "Sweete Mr. Shakspeare", 
and again, "O, sweete Mr. Shakspere, I'll have his 
picture at my study at the courte. ' ' 

Gai^l (id) — "lyct me heare Mr. Shakspear's veyne." 
Ingen (ioso) "Faire Venus, queene of beautie and of love, 

Thy red doth stayne the blushings of the morn, 

Thy snowy neck," etc., etc. 
Gai,i<. — "Let this duncified world esteem of Spenser and 

Chaucer, I'll worship sweete Mr. Shakespeare, and to 

honor him will lay his Venus and Adonis under my 

pillow,' etc. 

In but one other of these allusions, John Bodenham, 
1600, p. 13, is the name of Shakespeare mentioned, 
and then merely as one of the flowers of the Muses' 



RB^IfKRKNCSS TO SHAKBISPEJARE;. 263 

Garden: "Edmund Spenser, Henry Constable, Joiin 
Marston, Christopher Marlowe, Benjamin Johnson, 
William Shakespeare." 

In the two volumes of Ingelby and Furnivall, 
"Shakespeare," author (or works) is mentioned by 
name, between 1591 and 161 6, or during 25 years, 
just twenty times;— less than once a year; between 
1616 and 1623, the date of the issue of the First Foho, 
three times, or once in 2 years; between 1623 and 1632, 
when the 2nd Folio issued, 35 times, or nearly four 
times per year; between 1632 and 1660, 46 times, or 
about one and one-half times a year; between 1660 
and 1693, 10 1 times, or about three times a year. 
The total number of mentions in the one hundred 
years contained in these authors is 206, or a trifle 
over two per year. In 1659, the name Shakespeare 
was not mentioned at all. Think of it!* 

Wm. Shaksper, (assumed by Ingleby and Furni- 
vall to have been William Shakespeare), died in 1616. 
In Ingleby's book there is no mention of Shakspere or 
Shakespeare in that year, except that the inscription 
over his grave, "Good friend for Jesus sake forbear," 
etc., is given. In Furnivall there is not a line respect- 
ing either of the two men between 1610 and 1620, and 
indeed for a much longer period. 

Consider what these compilations mean: — During 
nearly the whole of the 19th century numerous per- 
sons have been searching all English literature con- 

"*"Funiivall's allusions are largely gathered by running 
through the plays of a voluminous author, as Ford, Massinger, 
Beaumont and Fletcher, and spotting everything that seemed 
"an echp of", etc., etc. 



264 shakspe;r not shakejspsarb;. 

temporary with the life of William Shaksper of Strat- 
ford-on-Avon, or of William Shakespeare, author, and 
his works, during the same period, the two names be- 
ing generally supposed to belong to the same individ- 
ual. The compilers of the modern English dictionaries 
solicit the aid of cultivated men and women, wherever 
the English language is spoken, in search of words in 
all books, and they find thousands of helpers. In this 
way, in search of Shaksper, player, or Shakespeare, 
author, or works, thousands of volunteer readers have 
gone through every book published between the years 
I have mentioned. Not only all books, but all ac- 
cessible correspondence contemporary with the lyondon 
life of player Shaksper, and there remains to-day a 
vast accumulation of it ; all diaries — and it was an age 
of diaries and note-books — these and correspondence 
filling the place which newspapers came to occupy in 
the later centuries. And what is the outcome of all 
this search? Between 1587, when he went to I^ondon, 
and 16 1 6, the year of his death, there are but three 
mentions and two possible allusions in books, letters, 
note-books, or diaries, of or to the player. That is, 
as a man connected in any way with a theater. There 
is not one of him as an author. 

WTiat Dr. Ingleby's reasons for making his com- 
pilation were is not apparent, but if he thought it to 
the honor of William Shaksper, of Stratford, he was 
a good deal astray. Charles Dickens wrote: "The life 
of Shakspere is a fine mystery, and I tremble every 
day lest something should turn up. ' ' Bishop Words- 
worth thoughtfully remarks on this, 396: "It has been 
a frequent subject of complaint that so little has come 



REFERKNCKS TO SHAKBSPEARB;. 265" 

down to us respecting our poet's life. For my part, I 
am inclined to doubt whether it would be desirable for 
us to be more fully informed concerning it than we 
actually are;" and in a note, the good Bishop of St. 
Andrews adds, that Charles Dickens in his letters, 
then just published (1879) "expresses very strongly 
the same sentiment. ' ' 

Well, something has turned up, and in an unex- 
pected quarter; something in the shape of Phillipps' 
"lyife", Ingleby's "Centurie", and Furnivall's "Fresh 
Allusions' ' . These three books have done the business 
for the claimant; these three authors have cooked 
Shaksper's goose, and there is no gainsaying their 
testimony. Ignorance is the mother of devotion; 
why could not these busy-bodies have let sleeping 
dogs lie, and suffered us to worship our numbo- jumbo 
in peace! 

A few mentions of the man Shaksper could have 
been collected outside his theatrical life — in the rec- 
ords of the Court of Stratford, or of the town itself; 
in deeds or conveyances of one sort or other. Two 
letters of Abraham Sturley to Richard Quiney speak 
of Mr. Shaksper, and "Mr. Wm. Shak", respectively; 
one referring to Shaksper's contemplated purchase of 
land at Shottery (H.-P., II, 57); the other saying 
that the writer had received Ouiney's letter assuring 
him "that our countriman would procure us monie", 
and nothing further. (H.-P., II, 59.) There is also 
extant a letter from said Quiney to Wm. Shaksper 
direct, asking for a loan of money. But these men- 
tions did not fall within the plan of Ingleby's book, 
and are 'therefore not given in it. 



266 SHAKSPEJR NOT SHAKEJSPEJARB;, 

The total ^number of mentions given in Ingleby in 
the same years (159 1 to 161 6) of Shakespere or Shake- 
speare, referring solely to certain poems and plays, are 
sixty -five, but I reject, as I have said, twenty-two of 
them for uncertainty. Many of them are so obscure 
that they should not have been included in the Cen- 
turie of Prayse. I will speak of the three references 
to the player. [Edmund Spenser should not have 
been in this book, and bears the asterisk of warning. 
A verse is quoted from Colin Clout, which alludes to 
some one under the name of Action: 

"And there, though last, not least is Aetion, 
A gentler shepheard may nowhere be found; 
Whose Muse, full of high thought's invention, 
Doth like himself Heroically sound." 

In his I St Kd., Dr. Ingleby says that this verse must 
have been meant for Shakespeare, because no other 
poet has a surname of heroic sound' ' ; but he adds that 
Halliwell-Phillipps remarks that the lines seem to 
apply with equal propriety to Warner.^ The 2d Ed. 
gives the verse, but the editor has afl&xed to it an 
asterisk of warning ; that is, it is regarded as pre- 
sumably a reference to some one else other than Shake- 
speare. Nobody now can tell whom it was meant 
for] . 

On p. 45, John Manningham, 13th March, 1601, 
makes the player party to an amour, as follows: — 

* Warner, author of Albion's England, a now forgotten poem. 
But ' 'Warner, according to Anthony Wood, was ranked by his 
contemporaries on a level with Spenser, and they were called 
the Homer and Virgil of their age. ' ' Craik. 



RE^I^E^Rl^NCE^S TO SHAKEJSPKARE;, 267 

"Uponatyme Burbridge played Rich. 3, there was a 
citizen gaen so farr in liking with him, that before shee 
went from the play shee appointed him to come that 
night unto her by the name of Rich, the 3. Shake- 
speare overhearing their conclusion, went before, was 
entertained and at his game ere Burbridge came. 
Then Message being brought that Rich, the 3 was at 
dore, Shakspere caused return to be made that William 
the Conquerour was before Rich, the 3. Stiakespere's 
name William". No light here on the authorship of 
the Shakespeare plays; or that William Shaksper was 
known to the writer of this note otherwise than as a 
player. Indeed it is fair to assume that Manning- 
ham, who was of the Middle Temple, and a barrister- 
at-law, an educated and reading man, as the Twelfth 
Night entry in his diary shows, did not recognize this 
man of the amour as the author of plays now pub- 
lished for some years under the name of William 
Shakespeare. He had made an entry in his diary, 
2 Feb., of the same year, 1601: "At our feast we had 
a play called Twelve Night, much like the Menechmi 
in Plautus, but most like and nearer to that in Italian 
called Inganni", and so on, giving a brief abstract of 
the play. When he recorded the story, six weeks 
later told on player Shaksper, or Shakespere, as he 
calls him, he very naturally would have added "author 
of the Twelfth Night play that so amused me a few 
weeks ago," if he had known or ever heard that he 
was the author. Nothing of the sort — no hint that 
player and author were one individual. The Shake- 
spere plays had been on the stage since 1589, or for 
twelve years before Manningham made his entry, 



268 SHAKSPEIR NOT SHAKESPEARB;. 

many of them of the greatest of the series, and ac- 
cording to Phillipps, they were much talked of. Yet 
this lawyer evidently knew nothing of their connection 
with the player of whom he tells the story. 

67. Anonymous, about 1605, Ratsie's Ghost. This 
advises a player to go to lyondon: "There thou 
shalt learn to be frugal, and to feed upon all men, but 
let none feed upon thee; to make thy hand a stranger 
to thy pocket, thy heart slow to perform thy tongue's 
promises; and when thou feelest th}^ purse well lined, 
buy thee some place of lordship in the country, . 
for I have heard indeed of some thai have gone to Lo7ido7i 
very meanly, and have come in time to be exceedingly 
wealthy.'' All commentators agree that this refers to 
player and land-owner Shaksper. The note by the 
editor to the second edition of Ingleby, says that 
"some that have gone to lyondon, etc.", unmistakably 
points to Shakespeare (Shaksper). 

94. John Davies of Hereford, about 161 1, Ing., 94: 
"To our English Terence, Mr. Will Shake-speare: 

Some say (good Will). 

Which I, in sport, do sing 

Hadst thou not plaid some kingly part, in sport, 

Thou hadst bin a companion for a King ; 

And beene a king among the meaner sott, 

Thou hast no rayling, but a raigning Wit." 

The editor says here: "It seems likely that these 
lines refer to the fact that Shakspere was a player, a 
profession that was then despised and accounted 
mean." If you were not a player you would pass for 
a good fellow, yes, even a king among the meaner 
sort. 



rsfe)re;nces to shakespkare. 269 

John Davies of Hereford* (not to be confounded 
with another poet, Sir John Davies), was an actor dur- 
ing the greater part of his Hfe. He here speaks of 
Shakespeare as an actor, not as a poet or as a play- 
writer. It is true that he heads this line quoted, 
"To our English Terence," but the lines that follow 
speak of the man as a player only. That cannot be 
construed into a testimony that Davies regarded Shak- 
sper as the author of the Shakespeare plays. Terence 
wrote comedies only, and if Davies referred to comedies 
attributed to William Shaksper, the player, he may 
have meant Fair Km, the Miller's Daughter, as prob- 
ably as anything else, — or interludes and jigges. 

There are two possible allusions to player Shaksper 
by the same John Davies. One of these is found in 
Ingleby, 58, 1603: 

•'Players, I love yee, and your Qualitief, 
As ye are Men, that pass time not abus'd: 
And some I love for painting, poesie, 
W. S. R. B. And say fell Fortune cannot be excus'd, 
That hath for better uses you refus'd: 
Wit, courage, good shape, good partes, and all good, 
As long as all these goods are no worse us'd. 
And though the stage doth staine pure gentle blood, 
Yet generous ye are in minde and moode." 

In the margin to the left are printed the capital let- 



* ' 'A contemporary author of a great quantity of verse. Gifted 
with extraordinary volubility and self-confidence, but with no 
delicacy or taste, the writings of this John Davies have survived 
more by reason of their bulk, and their accidental interest of ref- 
erence or dedication than from any intrinsic merit". Bnc. Brit. 

t " 'Quality' in Elizabethan English was the technical term 
for th,e 'actor's profession,' " Lee, 43. 



270 SHAKSPiER NOT SHAKEJSPKARB). 

ters, W. S. R. B. as reproduced here, supposed by In- 
gleby to mean William Shaksper and Richard Burbage. 
They may have stood for either William Smith or 
William Sly. William Shaksper would seem to have 
been too insignificant as a player to be thus apos- 
trophized. 

Again, 84, Ing., 1609, Davies speaks thus: 

"Some followed her by acting all mens parts, 
These on a stage she raised (in scorne) to fall: 
And made them Mirrors, by their acting Arts 
Wherein men saw their faults, thogh ne'r so small: 
W. S. R. B. Yet some she guerdoned not, to their desarts; 
But othersome, were but ill — Action all: 
Who while they acted ill, ill staid behind, 
(By custome of their maners) in their minde." 

Again the letters W. S. R. B. stand in the margin. 

These three mentions and the two possible allusions 
of and to player Shaksper are all that are to be found 
in Ingleby and Kurnivall between 1597 and 161 6. 

There is a reference to Thos. Heywood, p. 99, 1612, 
which has been claimed as testimony to the player's 
authorship, as follows: 

"Here likewise, I must necessarily insert a manifest 
injury done me in that work" (the Passionate Pilgrim, 
by W. Shakespeare, a collection made by the piratical 
publisher, William Jaggard, in which two poems by 
Heywood were printed as Shakespeare's), by taking 
the two epistles of Paris to Helen, and Helen to Paris, 
and printing them under the name of another, which 
may put the world in opinion I might steal them from 
him. ... So the author" (Ingleby says Shake- 
speare, but Heywood merely says the author) I know 



refe;rknc:^ to shakejspbard. 271 

much offended with Mr. Jaggard, that altogether un- 
known to him, presumed to be so bold with his name. ' ' 
Not much light here. As Jaggard' s book contains 
some genuine Shakespeare Sonnets, that is, Sonnets 
by the author of the Shakespeare poems, it is to be 
understood that Heywood had this author, whoever 
he was, in mind. Certainly there is nothing to con- 
nect the authorship with player Shaksper. 

Richard Barnfeild, 1598, Ing. 26, wrote "A Remem- 
brance of some English Poets' ' . After a verse to Spen- 
ser, and others to Daniel and Drayton, he speaks thus: 

"And Siiakespeare thou, whose honey-flowing vaine 
(Pleasing the World) thy Praises doth obtaine. . 
Whose Venus and whose Lucrece (sweete and chaste) 
Thy name in fame's immortall Booke have plac't. 
Live ever you, at least in Fame live ever: 
Well may the Bodye die, but Fame dies never. ' ' 

There is no intimation here that Barnfeild had a 
personal acquaintance with the author of Venus and 
Adonis, and there is not a word respecting plays writ- 
ten by that author, nor anything to connect the verse 
with player Shaksper. 

John Webster, 161 2, Ing. 100, is talking of sev- 
eral authors, the good opinion of whose labors he 
"had ever truly cherished" : — especially of "that full 
and heightened style of Master Chapman, the labored 
and understanding works of Master Jonson; the no 
less worthy composures of the both worthily excellent 
Master Beaumont and Master Fletcher; the right happy 
and copious industry of Mr. Shake-speare, Mr. Decker 
and Mr. Heywood," etc, Webster was one of the 



272 shakspe;r not shakespkar:^. 

great poets and dramatists of that age, and he, in all 
his writings, had nothing to say of "Shake-speare" 
other than that he exhibited remarkable industry. 
There is nothing personal in this mention, nothing 
implying that Webster had an acquaintance with this 
' 'Shake-speare' ' ; nothing to indicate that he had ever 
read the Venus and Adonis, or one of the plays; cer- 
tainly nothing that he had in mind a player at the 
Globe Theater. 

Shakspereans cite these words of John Webster as 
if they were proof conclusive that the contemporaries 
of William Shaksper held him to be the author of the 
Shakespeare poems and plays. Thus, the Spectator 
(lyondon) 7th May, 1898, in a paper on Dr. Brandes' 
' 'Shakespeare' ' , thinks that Brandes should have em- 
phasized the fact that so great a man as Webster 
classes "Shakespeare" (z. e. Shaksper) "promiscuously 
with Hey wood and Decker' ' . Whereas it is plain that 
Webster had no thought of anything but of the rapid- 
ity of production; and surely there is in his mention 
no thought of the player. Dr. Ingleby is led by these 
and other mentions of Shakespeare in the same style 
to say that "It is plain that the bard of our admira- 
tion was unknown to the men of that age. ' ' No one 
knew such a bard otherwise than by his writings. 

There is a reference, J. M., 1600-12, p. 98, which I 
reject for uncertainty; and to which Miss Smith has 
afl&xed the asterisk. 

"It seems 'tis true that W. S. said, 
When once he heard one courting of a Mayde, — 
BeHeve not thou Mens fayned flatteryes, 
lyovers will tell a bushell full of lies. ' ' 



RKFKR:eNCKS TO SHAKKSPEJARK, 273 

Miss Smith thinks this must have been an impromptu 
on the part of player Shaksper. But Ingleby says 
Shaksper was unknown to the men of that age, and it 
is very unlikely that impromptus of an unknown 
player at a public theater would be repeated in society. 
Some critics refer these W. S. verses to William Smith; 
Mr. Fleay says "William Sly. 

Nearly all the Shakespearean commentators quote 
Greene's words on the upstart crow which I have be- 
fore given (chap. VIII) as proof that William Shak- 
sper was, by 1592, a recognized author of plays. I 
have shown that there is no valid reason adduced by 
Phillipps or Ingleby, why "Shake-scene" should be 
identified with player Shaksper, but something more 
maybe said on the matter. Fleay, no, says: "Mr. 
R. Simpson (School of Shakspere, 1878) showed that 
'beautified with our feathers' -meant acting plays writ- 
ten by us, and he approves of that interpretation, but 
'bombast out a blank verse' undoubtedly refers to 
Shakspere as a writer also' ' . Even supposing Greene 
had player Shaksper in mind, the words "bombast", 
etc., do not necessarily or naturally, in the connection, 
mean anything more than to spout a verse on the stage 
in a noisy, ranting, uncouth manner. The meaning of 
bombast, in Webster, is to swell, or fill out, to pad, to 
inflate. The root meaning of the word, to sound, to 
boom, is the same as of bomb, and of bombard, of 
which last bombast is put down as a synonym. If we 
may assume that player Shaksper is meant, we are to 
understand that this Jack-of- all-trades, his butcher's 
apron just sloughed off, and his language the patois of 
Warwickshire, was making himself ridiculous in 



274 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPEARE. 

Spouting verses ''written by us", and his turkey-gob- 
bler strut and his delivery were the objects of Greene's 
sarcasm. In the same connection he speaks of the 
Shake- scene as one of ''those puppets that speak from 
our mouths' ' , ' 'those ahtics garnished in our colors' ' , those 
apes, peasants, painted moiisters, etc. On such a men- 
tion as that of ' 'bombasting out a blank verse' ' , to as- 
sert, first, that Jack Shaksper, the upstart crow, wrote 
Marlowe's play of 3 Henry VI, and secondly, that 
"bombasting" implies that he wrote the Shakespeare 
plays, is nonsense. Fleay allows that the first half of 
the sentence merely refers to the antics of the crow, as 
a player, and certainly the last half of the sentence 
serves to intensify the crow's description. This is a 
good sample of the crooked sticks by which the Shak- 
spereans endeavor to shore up their theory that the 
crow was the great Shakespeare himself. 

Another thing: Greene's remarks date from 1592, by 
which time the real ' 'Shake-speare' ' had written sev- 
eral of his best plays, I^ove's Labour's Lost, Love's 
Labour's Won, The Comedy of Errors, The Two 
Gentlemen of Verona, and Romeo and Juliet (I follow 
Fleay, I, 104-6). John Owens thinks that the first 
draft of Hamlet dates from 1585-7. Is there anything 
in these plays to arouse the ire of Greene, and to incite 
him to charge the author of them with "bombasting", 
in the sense of padding, turgidity, pompous phraseol- 
ogy ? Nothing at all. His words have no application 
to such, or any Shakespeare plays. It was the crow, 
plaj^er Shaksper, he was roasting, if by Shake-scene, he 
meant that man. Greene gives no hint that he 
knew the player as man or author, but if Shake- 



R:fi;pE;RENCES to shakespkark. 275 

scene could have meant that man, then Greene at- 
tacked him simply as a jack-at-all- trades, a puppet, 
antic, speaking our words, etc. 

This usual Shakesperean interpretation of Greene's 
words brings Chettle forward, and it is claimed that 
what he says is of extreme importance as proving 
that William Shaksper was on terms of intimacy with 
very great people. Following Fleay, the case is this: 
Chettle was the editor of the posthumous pamphlet en- 
titled "A Groatsworth of Wit", by Robert Greene, 
which begins thus: "Base-minded men, all three of 
you, if by my misery ye be not warned; for unto none 
of you (like me) sought those burrs to cleave; those 
puppets, I mean, that speak from our mouths, those 
antics garnished in our colors. Is it not strange that 
I, to whom they all have been beholden; is it not like 
that you, to whom they all have been beholden, 
shall (were ye in that case that I am now) be 
both at once of them forsaken ? Yes, trust them not; 
for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our 
feathers, that with his Tyger's heart wrapt in a 
player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast 
out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an 
absolute Johannes-fac-totum, is in his own conceit the 
only Shake-scene in a country. O that I might en- 
treat your rare wits to be employed in more profitable 
courses; and let these apes imitate your past excel- 
lence, and never more acquaint them with your ad- 
mired inventions. ... In this I might insert two 
more, that both have writ against those buckram gen- 
tlemen, but let their own works serve to witness 
against their wickedness, if they persever to maintain 



276 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKIJSPKARK. 

any more such, peasants. For other new comers I 
leave them to the mercy of these painted monsters, 
who I doubt will drive the best minded to despise 
them." 

Greene was writing on his death-bed, and the base- 
minded men he addressed, according to Fleay, are 
Marlowe, Lodge and Peele, and the two more whom 
he might insert, he says, were Kyd and Wilson. 
Ingleby identifies the three as Marlowe, Nash and 
Peele. 

Fleay says, 17: "The aim of the oft-quoted but 
sorely misunderstood address by Greene to his fellow 
dramatists is directed against a cojnpany of players, 
'burs, puppets, antics, apes, grooms, painted monsters, 
peasants, ' etc. , among whom is an 'upstart crow' , etc. 
This is palpably directed against Shakespere and Lord 
Stranges' players. Greene says that they had been 
beholden to him and his fellow writers whom he ad- 
dresses." The Manuscript of Greene was put into 
Chettle's hand for publication, and he w^as blamed 
personally for not having omitted some offensive parts. 
Mr. Fleay again speaks of this matter, no, in: "In 
December following, Chettle issued his Kind Heart's 
Dream, in which he apologizes for the offense given to 
Marlowe in the Groatsworth of Wit." He says, Ing., 
4: "About three months since died Mr. Robert Greene, 
leaving many papers in sundry bookseller's hands, 
among others his Groatsworth of Wit, in which a lettef 
written to divers playmakers, is offensively by one or 
two of them taken. . . . With neither of them that 
take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them I 
care not if I never be. The other, whom at that 



re;fsre;ncks to shakbspkark. 277 

time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I 
had . . . because myself have seen his demeanor 
no less civil than he excellent in the quality he pro- 
fesses. Besides divers of worship have reported his 
uprightness of dealing which argues his honesty, and 
his facetious grace in writing that approves his art. ' ' 
Fleay, on this, iii, says: "To Peele, he makes no 
apology. Shakspere was not one of those who took 
offence; they are expressly stated to have been two 
of the three authors addressed by Greene, the third 
(lyodge) not being in England." Why the Shakspe- 
reans should ever have appropriated the complimentary 
remarks of Chettle on Marlowe to Shaksper is not 
clear, unless it can be explained on the general prin- 
ciple of grabbing everything in sight that can help the 
Stratford man — the principle that makes capital out of 
forged plays, forged signatures, forged dates of plays 
performed, forged statements as to the theaters Shak- 
sper played, or owned a share, in, fraudulent letters of 
introduction, bogus death masks, spurious portraits 
{vide Rolfe's Shakespeare, the Boy, for one), etc., etc. 
These words of Chettle referring to Marlowe, have 
been time and again quoted triumphantly by the 
Shaksperolaters as evidence that William Shaksper 
had a facetious grace in writing; that he was reported 
on by divers of worship for his uprightness of dealing, 
which argues his honesty. 

Mrs. Dall adduces it as showing that the player man 
"was petted and courted by the nobility." Anybody 
could see, one would suppose, that Greene was talking 
of his associate play-wrights. When he spoke of 
Shaksper, if Shake-scene is Shaksper, it was as a 



278 SHAKSPEJR NOT SHAKSSPSARE. 

player, a burr, ape, crow, peasant, painted monster. 
Mr. Fleay stated more than ten years ago (1886) that 
there was an entire misconception as to Chettle's 
language, but the recent Shakesperean writers claim 
Chettle's testimony, as if Mr. Fleay had never existed, 
and as if, moreover, the words of Greene and Chettle 
were not accessible to all inquirers. lyct the believers 
that Shaksper was reported on by divers of worship 
produce an invitation to dinner, or to house, from any 
one of worship, or not of worship, for that matter, any 
gentleman or reputable citizen — the briefest form would 
do; or any letter in which the writer says he has seen, 
or met, or talked with, the accomplished player from 
the Curtain or the Globe, author of the wonderful 
Shakespeare plays now astonishing the public. Where 
are these letters and reports of contemporaries ? Echo, 
in her old fashion, answers where ? — and there falls a 
dead silence. 

There are thirty allusions to, or mentions of, plays, 
some of which cover several plays, as that of Francis 
Meres, presently to be quoted, who gives the names of 
twelve in one paragraph, but without a word of com- 
ment; also that of William Drummond, who names 
three; of Simon For man, three (or plays with similar 
names); and Lord Treasurer Stanhope, five. Often 
the allusions are very obscure, and not one of the 
thirty carries a thought of the author of the plays. 
As an example, Thomas Acherley, 1602, p. 52: 

Whilst that tny glory midst the clouds was hid, 
lyike to a jewel in an Bthiop's ear; 

the allusion being supposed to be to Romeo and Juliet 



rkfkre;ncks to shakkspe;are;. 279 

— but perhaps to an older play of that name than 
Shakspeare's. On p. 114, Anonymous: "Sir John 
Falstaff robbed with a bottle of sack". 
Of obscure reference, p. loi : 

The Cross his stage was, and he played the part, 
Of one that for his friend, did pawn his heart. 

The one being supposed to be Antonio in the Mer- 
chant of Venice. 
So, p. 107: 

And if it proves so happy as to please. 
We'll say 'tis fortunate, like Pericles; 

the reference being supposed to be to the Shakespeare 
play of Pericles, though there was another Pericles 
play. There is not in one of the allusions to plays or 
poems, or both together, any more than the mention 
by name of certain of the works or praises of them. 
There is nothing that speaks of the author as any one 
known to the writer, nor is there a word that con- 
nects poems or plays with the player Shaksper. If 
any one supposed, up to 1623, that player and author 
were the same person, he does not say so, and the fact 
that no one said so is warrant for believing that no one 
thought so. The myth had not got a start. Thus, 
p. 16, John Weever, 1595: "Honie-tong'd Shake- 
speare, when I saw thine issue", etc. Or Francis 
Meres, p. 21, 1598: "As the Greeke tongue is made 
famous and eloquent by Homer, Hesiod, etc. , and the 
I^atin language by Virgil, Ovid, etc. , so the English 
language is mightily enriched ... by Sidney, 
Spenser, Daniel, Shake-speare, Marlowe, Chapman, 
etc. . 



28o SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPKARE). 

' 'As the soul of Buphorbus was thought to Hve in 
Pythagoras, so the sweete, wittie, soul of Ovid lives 
in mellifluous and honey- tongued Shakespeare: wit- 
ness his Venus and Adonis, ' ' etc. 

This sort of eulogy does not give one shred of help 
to settle the question of the authorship of the Shake- 
speare poems and plays. 

Suppose that a writer of 1858 had thus expressed 
himself: "As the Greek tongue is made famous and 
eloquent by Homer, etc., and the Latin tongue by 
Virgil, Ovid, etc., so is the English tongue mightily 
enriched by Dickens, Thackeray and George Kliot," the 
latter being the nom de plume of an author of that 
period, whose personality was unknown. "George 
Bliot" was a name, nothing more, and "William 
Shakespeare" was a name and nothing more. To say 
that William Shakespeare and George Bliot had en- 
riched the English tongue means simply that their 
works deserve the highest praise. In neither was 
there a thought of the author, the individual ; the 
thought was of the works alone. To claim that such 
a mention of George Bliot connects or identifies that 
name with a low comedian or minstrel of that period, 
whose name chanced to be George Bliot, or Blyot, 
and is proof that the comedian was the author of the 
Mill on the Floss, and Adam Bede, would manifestly 
be absurd. Just so, to claim that the mention of 
Meres, Barnfeild, Harvey and others — all to the works 
of William Shakespeare, with no thought of the in- 
dividual, connects that author with William Shaksper 
the pla^^er, is no less absurd. 

Another is Bdmund Bolton, 1610, p. 91; ". . . For- 



RE;FE;R:eNCKS TO shakkspeare;. 281 

asmucli as the people's judgments are uncertain, the 
books out of which we gather the most warrantable 
English, are not many to my remembrance. 
But among the chief, or rather the chief, are in my 
opinion, these: Sir Thomas More's works, George 
Chapman's first seven books of Iliades, Samuel Dan- 
yel, Michael Drayton his Heroical Epistles of England, 
Marlowe his excellent fragment of Hero and Leander, 
Shakespeare, Mr. Francis Beaumont and innumerable 
other writers for the stage. ' ' Here is no intimation 
that the player is the writer of the plays. The name 
Shakespeare is cited as one of the authors "out of 
whom we gather the most warrantable English"; and 
that is right, for from the Shakespeare plays are cer- 
tainly to be gathered that thing. 

Another is Thomas Freeman, 1614, p. 106: 

Shakespeare, that nimble Mercury, thy brain, 

Lulls many hundred Argus-eyes asleep. 

So fit, for all thou fashionest thy vein. 

At the horse-foote fountain thou hast drunk full deep, 

Virtues or vices, these to thee all one is; 

Who loves chaste life, there is lyucrece for a teacher; 

Who list read lust, there's Venus and Adonis. 

Besides in plays thy wit winds like Meander; 

Whence needy new-composers borrow more 

Than Terence doth from Plautus or Meander. 

But to praise thee aright I want thy store; 

Then let thine own works thine own worth upraise, 

And help t' adorne thee with deserved bays." 

What this has to do with William Shaksper, I do 
not see. It is evident however, that Freeman held 
the author of Venus and Adonis to have written 
plays, not specified, and he judged correctly. That 



282 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPEARE. 

author was Marlowe, and lie wrote Edward III, and 
many other plays. 

Ingleby well says: "The absence of sundry great 
names with which no pains of research, scrutiny, or 
study, could connect the most trivial allusion to the 
bard or his works (such e. g., as Lord Brooke, 
lyord Bacon, Selden, Sir John Beaumont, Henry 
Vaughan, and Lord Clarendon) is tacitly signij&cant, 
the iteration of the same vapid and affected compli- 
ments, couched in conventional terms, from writers of 
the first two periods, (1598-1643) comparing Shake- 
speare's "tongue", "pen", or "vein", to silver, honey, 
sugar, or nectar, while they ignore his greater and dis- 
tinguishing qualities, is expressly significant It is 
plain, for one thing, that the bard of our admiration 
was unknown to the men of that age". Preface. 

And again: ''^Assuredly, no one during the Centurie 
had any suspicion that the genius of Shakespeare was 
zc7iique, and that he was sui generis, i. e. , the only ex- 
emplar of his species. Those who ranked him very high 
compared him to Spenser, Sydney, Chapman, Jonson, 
Fletcher, and even lesser lights, and most of the judges 
of the time assigned the first place to one of them' ' . 
Note this remarkable admission by Dr. Ingleby, that 
during the hundred years from the appearance of the 
Shakespeare plays, no one had discovered that the 
genius of "William Shakespeare", was unique, or 
even suspected it. The plays had achieved no special 
reputation, and as the Dr. says, by most of the judges 
they were ranked below the productions of several 
other authors. It seems impossible in the light of 
to-day that this could have been so, but the Centurie 



rkfkre;ncks to shakkspeare;. 283 

of Prayse substantiates Ingleby's assertion, and there 
is no gainsaying it. 

We do not need to be told, that the Venus and 
Adonis is melHfluous, or that I^ove's I^abour 's L^ost is 
excellent for the stage. Dr. Ingleby might as well 
bring authorities to prove that Elizabeth was a well- 
known queen. We have the poems and plays, and 
can judge of their quality ourselves. But this is what 
a large part of the Doctor's references tell, and 
nothing more. No one disputes the fact that these 
works appeared between 1587 and 1623, and there 
was no need of citing a multitude of witnesses to 
that matter. What we do want to know is, who was 
William Shakespeare, the author of these plays, for 
that the name concealed his personality is manifest. 
We know that he was the son of a gentleman, and 
brought up as a gentleman; that he had a thorough 
education; that he had studied and traveled abroad; 
that he owned or had access to all books, ancient or 
modern — because, as Dr. Baynes says of the Venus 
and Adonis, and its author's profound classical edu- 
cation, the plays themselves give evidence of all these 
things. We should have liked to see him in his 
privacy, working at one of these plays, should have 
liked to hear him talk, should have been delighted at 
reading a letter from his hand. If Drs. Ingleby and 
Furnivall, or Miss Smith, had given us something of 
this sort, there would have been sense in these refer- 
ences. Here were plays coming out rapidly for 
thirty-six years, 1587-1623, master-pieces in litera- 
ture. During the first twenty-nine, or from 1587- 
j6i6, tjiere are, according to Ingleby, 65 mentions of 



284 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKEISPEARS. 

or allusions to the poems and plays (some so obscure 
that it takes a keen scented Shakespearean to discover 
them), and but thirty of these to the plays alone 
in all contemporary literature, or in journals, note- 
books ("an age of common place books", H.-P. I, 
275), records and correspondence. That makes, count- 
ing everything cited by Ingleby and Miss Smith, good, 
bad, or indifferent, scarcely more than two mentions 
per year to both poems and plays, or to author Shake- 
speare by name, and but one mention per year of the 
plays. Counting the twenty- one Fresh Allusions 
given by Furnivall for the same period, there are less 
than two mentions of the plays per year. As I have 
before said, two or more plays are sometimes included 
in one of Ingleby's mentions, and separating them, in 
such cases, there are 88 mentions or references to 
single plays. Thus; 

Richard III, in tlie 29 years, is spoken of 9 times. 

Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet, each, 8 " 

The Comedy of Errors, Henry IV, Part 2nd, IvOve's 
Labour 's Lost, Richard II, each, 5 " 

Henry IV. Part I, Julius Caesar, Pericles, each,. . . 4 " 

Henry VI, Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Tem- 
pest, Titus Andronicus, Winter's Tale, each, 3 " 

Cjrmbeline, King John, Midsummer Night's Dream, 
each, 2 " 

Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing, Taming of 
the Shrew, Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night, 
Antony and Cleopatra, Love's Labour's Won, 
(All 's Well, etc.) each i " 

That is, what is supposed to have been the most 
popular Shakespeare play, Richard III, in 29 years 
is spoken of but nine times, or once in three years; 



Hamlet and Romeo, but eight times; Love's I^abour's 
Lost, the first play of the series, but four times, or 
once in seven years; Merchant of Venice and Macbeth, 
once in nearly ten j^ears; Henry V, supposed to have 
been amazingly popular, but once in the whole period. 
This is a very singular state of things. Plays alleged 
by Phillipps to have taken the town by storm, "to 
have been the talk of the town' ' , as if every soul were 
hurrying to the Curtain or the Globe, or discussing these 
wonderful things, are found to have been spoken of 
or alluded to in all contemporaneous literature on an 
average of the whole, about three times in twenty- 
nine years. I have been astonished at the results of 
an examination of the Centurie of Prayse. I had sup- 
posed that "William Shakespeare", though writing 
under an assumed name, and personally unknown, 
was not without honor in his own age; that all literary 
England had recognized the rising of a great drama- 
tist, and that he soon took his place as the brightest 
star in the dramatic constellation. Far from. it. No 
one observed the rising, no one cared for the plays, or 
gave a thought to their author. There is not a hint 
in Ingleby or Furnivall that any one considered it 
worth while to inquire who was writing under the 
name. "William Shakespeare." Apparently these 
plays attracted no more attention in England than if 
they had appeared in a foreign country. Collectively, 
they were never spoken of. It is true that Francis 
Meres, 1598, enumerated twelve plays by name, which 
were attributed to "Shakespeare", but two, if not 
three, of them were written by Marlowe, and able 
critics, assign others to different authors. To say that 



286 SHAKSPER NO'I' SHAKESPEJAREJ. 

a play was "Shakespeare's", in 1598, was equivalent 
to saying that it was written by a club of play-wrights, 
who chose to be hidden under a sobriquet. 

All mentions are of the separate plays, and they 
might have been written by as many different authors, 
for all that has come down to us. No one ever wrote, 
"the author of Romeo and Juliet has written a new 
play, called Midsummer Night's Dream", etc., but 
each play is spoken of as if it had no connection with 
any other. This condition obtained till the plays 
were collected and published in the Folio of 1623. 
Until that year, there were no "works" of William 
Shakespeare. 

It is clear enough that separately or collectively, the 
Shakespeare plays, up to 1616, had no reputation at 
all — that they were unknown. So Dr. Ingleby says: 
"It is plain that the bard of our admiration was un- 
known to the men of that age' ' ; and this bard cer- 
tainly did not set people talking about him or his. 
plays. Fleay says: "Allusions to his works will be 
found collected in Dr. Ingleby' s Centurie of Prayse; 
but they consist almost entirely of slight references. 
Neither as addressed to him by others, nor 
by him to others, do any commendatory verses ex- 
ist in connection with any of his or any other men's 
works published in his life-time." That is to say, he 
never wrote . a line in praise of the works of a con- 
temporary, and no contemporary wrote a line in 
praise of his works, before 1623. Certainly, a sur- 
prising fact! As I said before, Shakespeare, author 
of the plays — not the player — was without honor in 



S.EiP'BREjNCE^S "TO SHAKigSPE^AR:^. 287 

his own age; nobody cared for the plays, or thought 
them worth notice. 

Many persons have wondered that Francis Bacon 
should not have spoken of, or seemed to know, a con- 
temporary whose writings were steeped in his own 
philosophy, particularly as every other literary man of 
his time in England is mentioned in his correspond- 
ence, or his published works. But Ingleby proves in- 
con trovertibly, that nobody observed or appreciated 
the plaj^s, and this being so, there was no reason why 
Bacon should speak of works or writer. If in a 
future century, searching all literature between 1850 
and 1890, the name and works of Alfred Tennyson 
should be discovered as spoken of but once or twice a 
year, it would argue himself and works unknown. 
Just so with Shakespeare and his plays. It was only 
after many years, and after several generations of men 
had passed away, that they came to have the reputation 
they have to-day. 

Dr. Ingleby' s book was undertaken solely to trj^- and 
make a case for the Stratford man, to father the poems 
and plays on him. And what success has he met with ? 
For twenty-five years, this man was engaged at his 
trade in lyondon and the provinces (i 587-161 6), and 
three of his contemporaries in all these years are found 
to have spoken of him, and no man ever spoke of him 
a second time. One said he was a hunks; one tells a 
tale which shows him to have been an adulterer; a 
third says he would have been a decent fellow had he 
not been a player. That makes one mention of him 
every nine years and eight months. Nineteen years 
after his death, and twenty-five after his return to 



28g SHAKSP:eR NOl* shak:^sp:^ar:^. 

Stratford, one old man bethinks him that he used to 
call the plaj^er Will, and that he had an enchanting 
quill that commanded mirth or passion, and was a mel- 
lifluous fellow. Had Heywood testified that this was 
the man who wrote Twelfth Night or lycar, we should 
know a good deal more than we do now. To say that 
he had an enchanting quill, because the writer needed 
a word to rhj^me with Will, carries no meaning with 
it, nor does it to say that he was mellifluous. Probably 
Heywood meant that the player was a delightful and 
persuasive fellovf when he had wet his whistle. And 
yet this mention by Heywood is interpreted by the 
willing Shaksperolaters to mean that here at last is a 
certificate to Shaksper's authorship of the Shakespeare 
plays. "He was a mellifluous fellow, and I will say, 
in order to get the proper rhyme, that he had an en- 
chanting quill." That means, (it appears) that Shak- 
sper wrote I^ear and Midsummer Night's Dream. 
Suppose we grant that the player ever learned to 
write, and got so far that he could use a quill, an ac- 
complishment which I deny that he ever possessed, may 
not Heywood have had in mind the Hog in Armour, or 
the Comedy of George- a- Green ? Where does a Shake- 
speare play come in? The last of the plays just men- 
tioned, was printed as done ' 'by William Shakespeare", 
and up to the issue of the Folio, there was as much 
reason for attributing it to Shakespeare as Hamlet, or 
Lear. 

The three references given above are all that Dr. 
Ingleby has been able to find from 1587 to 16 16, re- 
lating to the player. Halliwell-Phillipps believes, how- 
ever, that there is another reference to the man, not 



given by lugleby, thus: "In May, 1602, the dramatist 
bought from William and John Combe for ^320, one 
hundred and seven acres of land near Stratford-on- 
Avon." Halliwell-Phillipps says "it may have been 
that this acquisition is referred to by Crosse in his 
Vertues Commonwealth, 1603, when he speaks thus 
ungenerously of the actors and dramatists of the pe- 
riod; as 'these copper-laced gentlemen growe rich, 
purchase lands by adulterous plays — and not a few of 
them usurers and extortioners which they exhaust out 
of the purses of their haunters,' " etc., etc. 

We can trust the judgment of Mr, Halliwell-Phil- 
lipps, and doubtless here is another contemporary tes- 
timony, though not found in Ingleby nor Furnivall, to 
the character of the man Shaksper. 

Venus and Adonis had appeared in 1593, and I^u- 
crece a year after. The authorities agree that in 
Elizabeth's day poets above all others honored a lan- 
guage, while writers of plays were very low company. 
Fleay says: "The writing of poems was fit work for a 
prince, but of plays was only congruous with strolling 
vagabondism' ' ; and Phillipps tells us that the writers 
of plays stood very close to the level of buffoons 
and tumblers. The Shakespeare poems at once ex- 
cited interest, and edition after edition poured from 
the press, always bearing the name of "William 
Shakespeare". How comes it then that John Man- 
ningham, of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-law, re- 
cording in his diary that naughty story of player 
Shakespere, should not have mentioned him as the 
writer of the splendid poems which all the world has 
read or is reading, and should consider it necessary to 



290 SHAKSPE;R NOl* SHAKKSPE^ARlJ. 

append to the entry "Shakespere' s name William"; as 
if one should enter in a note-book "Scott's name 
Walter", "Burns' name Robert"! In penning the 
name Shakespere, the writer's thought would turn 
naturally to the well-known poet; and player and 
poet would have been associated in his mind. The 
fact is, there exists no evidence that any man of that 
generation thought player Shaksper, or "Shakespere", 
as Manningham wrote it, was the individual whose 
name, "William Shakespeare", stood on the title 
pages of the poems. Had the literarj^ public known 
that the great poet was a hireling at the Curtain, 
compelled to prance in "Kempe's jigges" before an 
ignorant public theater audience to earn his daily 
bread (see charming cut of Kempe, before given), 
curiosity would have made cultivated persons eager to 
get a sight of him, and many an offer of assistance 
and place would have been urged on him. Great 
noblemen would have contended for him, E)lizabeth 
would have provided for him, and the records of the 
time would have repeatedly spoken of William Shake- 
speare. There is nothing of the kind; Manningham, 
in effect, says: "I heard a good storj^ the other day of 
a player- fellow named Shakespere; who he is I know 
not except that his christian name is William, and 
he hangs out at the Curtain." 

William Shakespeare, the poet and play-wright, was 
unknown to the men of that age. Dr. Ingleby is at 
the pains to tell us so emphatically, although ten 
editions of the poems, bearing his name on the title 
page, were launched upon the country between 1593 
and 1 61 6. Nobody knew who Shakespeare was; no- 



RE^Ifl^RKNCSS TO SHAKESPEARE. 29 1 

body had seen liim or was reported as having talked 
with him. His personahty was as impenetrable as later 
was that of Junius. 

But, on the contrary, William Shaksper, the player, 
was well known to certain classes of the men of that 
age, and Ingleby's remarks have no application to 
him. For a score of years, he had been as conspicuous 
in connection with the theaters as were Kempe and 
Tarleton. He had repeatedly strolled with his com- 
pany through every shire in England. The only 
possible conclusion is that this player Shaksper was 
not known as the author of the poems or plays. Had 
he been, there is no conceivable reason for making a 
mystery of the matter. According to his admirers, 
he thought no more of the plays he wrote than the 
turtle does of the eggs which it lays in the sand. He 
tossed them off as the need of the theater demanded, 
and left them to shift for themselves. 

After player Shaksper's death, in 1616, there is 
scarcely a mention of him extant by any one who had 
known him personally. No cultivated gentleman had 
cared to make the acquaintance of a man whose de- 
spised life profession put him on the level with jug- 
glers, tumblers and buffoons, even were there no other 
reason. What mentions there are, are almost ex- 
clusively contained in the elegiac and eulogistic prose 
or verse prefixed to the First Folio, by order of the 
printers, and again to the 2nd Folio, in 1632. The 
writers in the two cases were in part the same. They 
all seemed to claim that player and author were one 
individual. For reasons, presently given (Ch. XI), 



292 SHAKSPE^R NOT SHAEEJSPSARE;. 

this entire mass of testimony is worthless, and de- 
serves no consideration. 

In 1622, William Basse, (Ingleby, 136) wrote the 
following lines: "On Mr. William Shakespeare; he 
died in April, 161 6". 
Another elegiac effusion: 

"Sleep, rare Tragediau, Shakespeare, sleep alone, 
Thy unmolested peace, unshared cave 
Possess as Lord, not tenant, of thy grave. 
That unto us and others it may be 
Honor hereafter to be laid by thee." 

Certainly there is no light here on the authorship of 
the plays. ' 'Tragedian' ' is the appellation of a tragic 
actor, as the tragedian Booth. Ingleby, 3, makes it 
the equivalent of "Shake-scene" of Greene's diatribe, 
and for illustration he quotes Jonson's line from the 
preface to the First Folio (as before stated in Chap. VI) : 

' 'to hear thy Buskin tread 
And shake a Stage. ' ' 

Also a passage from The Puritaine, 1607: "Have 
you never seen a stalking-stamping Player, that will 
raise a tempest with his toung and thimder with his 
heels?" There is no reason to suppose that Basse 
meant anything more than a compliment to the de- 
parted player — as a player. 

In Sir Richard Baker's "Chronicle of the Kings of 
England . . . unto the Death of King James", 
1643, is a list of men of note in Elizabeth's time 
("the ocean is not more boundless than the number 
of men of note of her time") the statesmen, soldiers, 
naval commanders and sailors, orators, men of learn- 
ing, writers, poets, theologians, etc., etc., but among 



rbfe;rsncss to shakkspkark. 293 

the poets is no such name as William Shakespeare. 
The chronicler appends to his list this sentence: 
' 'After such men it might be thought ridiculous to 
speak of stage-players; but seeing excellency in the 
meanest thing deserves remembering ... it may 
be allowed to", etc. He then mentions Richard Bur- 
bage, and Edward Allen as "such actors as no age 
must ever look to see the like;" and Richard Tarleton 
for the clown's part "never had his match, never will 
have." "For writers of plays, and such as have been 
players themselves, William Shakespeare and Ben- 
jamin Jonson have especially left their names remem- 
bered to posterity." 

Spoken thirty-two years after William Shaksper 
left the Globe Theater, this is feeble and wholly in- 
adequate testimony as to that man's authorship of the 
Shakespeare plays. Baker may have accepted the as- 
surances of the Folio that the player wrote these plays, 
but he knew nothing of him as the author of the 
Venus and Adonis, or the Sonnets. He overlooks the 
poet completely, and, apologizing for mentioning so 
mean a thing as a stage-player, of whom it might be 
thought "ridiculous to speak", introduces Shaksper 
along with Burbage and the clown, Tarleton. Of the 
William Shakespeare of the Venus and Adonis Baker 
knew nothing at all. 

This is all that any one said after the player's death. 
There are, however, plenty of testimonies to Shaksper 
in his business capacity, as the trader, money-lender, 
the litigant, the rich man, but in a literary capacity, 
there is nothing. And yet there have been multitudes 
of m,en and women who have worked like beavers to 



294 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. 

make this ignorant strolling player to be the author of 
the greatest and the most learned works of imagina- 
tion and philosophy in the language; men and women, 
who had they met the man on the lyondon streets, in 
1597, or at any time, would have scorned to touch his 
hand, or to be known as his acquaintance. 

The conclusion of the whole matter is, that not one 
of player Shaksper's contemporaries testified in print 
or in correspondence, that he, Shaksper, was the 
author of these works. "He was unknown to the 
men of that age"; a significant fact. According to 
the modern view, he spent more than twenty years in 
writing the most wonderful poems and plays poet 
ever put his hand to, and not an allusion in contem- 
porary literature tells the future generations that he 
was known as an author at all. Jonson was known 
as an author, as were Beaumont, Greene, Marlowe, 
and scores of others, and there is abundant contem- 
porary testimony to every one of these; but no one 
knew and testified that William Shaksper, one of the 
most prolific authors then living, if he really wrote the 
Shakespeare plays, was an author at all. The fact is, 
the theory that William Shaksper wrote the poems 
and plays originated after his death, and developed in 
the following century, regardless of evidence and pos- 
sibility. 

Mr. T. W. White believes that Dr. Ingleby has 
omitted from his Centurie two of the most important 
allusions to player Shaksper in contemporary authors, 
one of which is to be found in the Return from Par- 
nassus, 1604. H.-P., I, 212, tells us that "it was on 
the 15th of March, 1604, that James undertook his 



REFKRENCES TO SHAKESPEARE. 295 

formal march from the Tower to Westminster. . . . 
In the royal train were the nine actors to whom the 
special license had been granted the previous year, in- 
cluding of course Shakespeare" (Shaksper) "and his 
three friends, Burbage, Heminge and Condell. Each 
of them were presented with four 3^ards and a half of 
scarlet cloth, the usual dress allowance to players be- 
longing to the household. " It is believed that this 
affair is referred to in the Return from Parnassus 
here given: 

"Better it is among fiddlers to be chief, 
Than at a player's trencher beg relief. 
But is 't not strange those mimic apes should prize 
Unhappy scholars at a hireling's rate? 
Vile world, that lifts them up to high degree, 
But treads us down in grovelling misery. 
England affords those glorious vagabonds 
That carried erst their fardels on their backs. 
Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets, 
Sooping it in their glaring satin suits, 
And pages to attend their masterships. 
With mouthing words that better wits have framed 
They purchase lands, and now esquires are made. ' ' 

Reed says (43): "No other actor (than Shaksper) 
is known at that time to have possessed large landed 
estates, or aspired to any mark of social distinction." 

The other allusion is found in Ben Jonson's Epigram 
on Poet- Ape, Moxon's Jonson, p. 669. Mr. White's 
theory is that manager Shaksper bought plays of poor 
authors exactly as his contemporary, manager Hens- 
lowe, did, as is certainly known; also employed poor 
play-wrights to revise and re-write old plays, as Hens- 
lowe did; and in both cases passed them off as his own, 



296 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPBARB), 

as Henslowe did not. Heuce the appropriateness of 
the Poet- Ape: 

' 'Poor Poet- Ape, that would be thought our chief, 
Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit, 
From brokage is become so bold a thief 
As we, the robbed, leave rage, and pity it. 
At first he made low shifts, woiild pick and glean, 
Buy the reversion of old plays; now grown 
To a little wealth, and credit in the scene. 
He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own; 
And, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes 
The sluggish gaping auditor devours; 
He marks not whose 't was first: and after-thnes 
May judge it to be his, as well as ours. 
Fool ! As if half eyes will not know a fleece, 
From locks of wool, or from the whole piece." 

Both Mr. T. W. White and Mr. Edwin Reed dis- 
cover evidences of the existence of some great im- 
posture on the stage, during Shaksper's career. 
"Our age doth produce many such, one of the greatest 
being a stage-player, a man \yith sufficient ingenuity 
for imposition." Confessio Fraternitalis; chap, xii; 
anonymous, circa 1615. Jonson's Poet-Ape: 

"Now grown 
To a little wealth and credit in the scene. 
He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own," etc. 

The Return from Parnassus: 

' 'With mouthing words that better wits have framed, 
They purchase lands, and now esquires are made." 

RaTSie'S Ghost. — "Thou shalt learn to be frugal ... to 
feed upon all men; and when thou feelest thy purse well- 
lined, buy thee some place in the country." 



REP'EJRBJNCEIS TO SHAKEJSPEJARB;. 297 

Mr. Alexander B, Grosart, in "Green Pastures, be- 
ing Choice Extracts from the works of Robert 
Greene", lyondon, 1894, says: "We are so used to 
idolatrize Shakespeare . . . that we shirk in- 
quiring into his relations with his precursors and con- 
temporaries. I, for one, feel satisfied that fuller 
knowledge of these would prove that for years, when 
feeling his way upward, Shakespeare was a very buc- 
caneer in spoiling the Egyptians, or metaphorically in 
turning to his own account the manuscript writings of 
unfortunate contemporaries who were constrained to 
write for the theaters." Mr. Grosart, by the way, 
believes the Stratford man was the real William 
Shakespeare, and his opinion of him is scarcely better 
than Jonson's of the poet-ape. 

Judge Stotsenburg, (Ind. News, 7th Apr., 1897) 
makes the point that as William- Shaksper could not 
write, he could not have been the Ape referred to. 
There seems to me nothing in Jonson's lines that 
necessarily implies the ability in the Ape to personally 
write anything. It is apparently enough that he 
could get his writing done by other men, who "could 
pick and glean" or that he could "buy the reversion of 
old plays". In one way or another the Ape got plays 
out of other men, and passed them off for his own; 
this was the gist of his offense. 

Greene had written of "Fair Em", an anonymous 
production attributed to Shakespeare: "The ass is 
made proud by this underhand brokery. And he that 
cannot write true English without the help of clerks 
of parish churches, will needs. make himself the father 
of interludes. ' ' 



298 shakspe;r not shakkspeare. 

After 1623, it would seem natural that the name 
of "William Shakespeare", as the author of the 
Folio, should be oftener in men's thoughts than it had 
before been, but, on examining Ingleby for references 
between 1623 and 1632, it is clear that it is not so. 
In the nine years there are but seventeen mentions of 
man or works. During the same period, I find in 
Furnivall no mention of the man, and but seven, all 
trivial, of the works. 

In illustration: Sir Herbert's Office Book, Ing., p. 
157, mentions two of the plays as having been per- 
formed at Whitehall in 1623 and 1624. In 1627, he 
enters the sum of ^^ as having been received from 
Mr. Heminge in the company's name, for forbidding 
the playing of "Shakespeare's plays," to the Red Bull 
Company. What plays they were is not stated, but 
the Globe Company appears to have had rights in 
some of the Shakespeare plays. As I have noted else- 
where (Chap. XIII), it is a curious fact, that in all 
this literature, no single play is identified as Shake- 
speare's, as in this Office Book, we read of Shake- 
speare plays, but never of a play, as Shakespeare's 
Hamlet, Twelfth Night, etc. 

P. 159, 1524, says of a certain sort of people that 
they are "like Hamlet's Ghost." 

P. 160, 1624, also speaks of Hamlet's Ghost, and, 
by name only, of Pyramus and Thisbe. 

P. 161, 1624, speaks of Venus and Adonis, and also 
of Benedick and Beatrice. 

P, 164, 1625, "A young Gentle Lady, having read 
the works of Shakespeare" (the Folio) "made me this 
question' ' — about Falstaff and Sir John Oldcastle. 



re;fb;rences to shakespeare. 299 

P. 186, Drayton, 1627: 

' 'Shakespeare, thou hast as smooth a comic vein 
Fitting the sock and in thy natural brain 
As strong conception, and as clear a rage 
As any one that traflS.cked with the stage." 

Referring to the author of the plays, whoever he 
was. 

Cowley, 1628: p. 170: 

. . . "may be 
By his Father in his study took 
At Shakespeare's plays", etc. 

One of the few mentions of the Folio. 

P. 172, B. Jonson, 1629, calls Pericles a "mouldy 

tale": 

. . . "and stale 
As the Shrieves crusts, and nasty as his fish- 
Scraps out of every dish 

Thrown forth and raked into the common tub, 
May keep up the Play-club: 
There, sweepings do as well 
As the best ordered meal, ' ' etc. 

Not very complimentary to the author of that play. 

P. 174, same, 1630-1637, as to Shakespeare's never 
blotting a line — which I speak of in the next chapter. 

P. 181, 1630, Anon: in a jest book, tells of an odd 
epitaph in the church- yard, at Stratford-on-Avon, "a 
town most remarkable for the birth of famous William 
Shakespeare." 

P. 176, John Milton, 1630: "An Epitaph on the 
admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare." 



300 SHAKSPEIR NOT shakespbjare;. 

"What need my Shakespeare for his honor'd bones 
The labor of an Age, in piled stones, 
Or that his hallowed Reliques should be hid 
Under a starre-y pointing Pyramid ? 
Dear Sonne of Memory, great Heire of Fame 
What needst thou such dull witness to thy name ? 
Thou in our wonder and astonishment 
Hast built thyself a lasting monument: 
For whilst . . . 

Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart. 
From the leaves of thy unvalued Booke 
Those Delphicke lines with deep Impression tooke, 
Then thou our fancy of herselfe bereaving 
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving. 
And so Sepulchred in such pomp doth lie 
That Kings for such a Tombe would wish to die. ' ' 

"Milton's meaning is this: Every heart by the plas- 
tic power of fancy takes deep impression of Shake- 
speare's lines. Then, by deprivation of fancy, we are 
turned to marble, and we thus become an inscribed 
monument to Shakespeare. ' ' Ingleby. He is so im- 
pressed on reading the plays in the Folio, that he 
thinks the dramatic poet W. Shakespeare needs no 
piled stones, the labor of an age, and no star-pointing 
pyramid. It is the old thought — Exegi mo7iumentum ^ 
etc. All cultivated men to-day will agree with Milton 
that the man who wrote the Shakespeare plays needs 
no other monument to keep his memory alive. Milton 
knew nothing of player Shaksper. He was a baby 
when that man left lyondon for Stratford, and but 
seven when the player died. But he knew the poet 
Shakespeare from the Folio, and hence his Epitaph. 

In E' Allegro (1632) Milton has these lines : 



RiBFEjRSNCKS TO SHAKEJSPE^ARE. 30I 

"Then to the well-trod stage anon 
If Jonson's learned sock be on, 
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child 
Warble his native wood-notes wild. ' ' 

On this Dr. Morgan says: "We take this to mean 
that the poet, when in his L' Allegro mood, will, 
among other delights, go to the theater to hear a 
learned play of Jonson's, or some of Shakespeare's 
sweet wood-notes. But to show how uncritical the 
whole passage is, we have only to ask where in Shake- 
speare are we to look for 'native wood-notes wild'; 
such wood-notes as are sounded are not wild, but most 
classically^ timed and measured". "No poet was ever 
less a warbler of 'wood-notes wild' . ' ' Walter Savage 
I^andor. 

Milton never saw a play acted in a London theater. 
"The play-house was abhorred by the Puritans, and 
avoided by those who desired the character of serious- 
ness and decency. A grave lawyer would have de- 
based his dignity, and a young trader would have 
impaired his credit by appearing in these mansions of 
licentiousness." Dr. Johnson. 

Halliwell-Phillipps, I, 118, gives the !<' Allegro 
quotation as a proof that Shaksper was believed to 
have written the plays by inspiration: "That Shake- 
speare wrote without effort, by inspiration, not by de- 
sign, was, so far as it has been recorded, the unani- 
mous belief of his contemporaries and immediate 
successors", instancing Milton's line above given as 
evidence that one of his immediate successors thought 



302 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPKARK. 

the manager of the Globe inspired.* Whom else of 
all Shaksper's contemporaries, Mr. Phillipps has in 
view, he does not tell us, and there is no clue to their 
names in Ingleby or Furnivall. I fear the unanimous 
belief of both contemporaries and successors must be 
restricted to the single successor, John Milton, who was 
no contemporary, and the man who could say so little, 
while meaning so much, could have voiced the an- 
swers of the Delphian Apollo. 

These, and four notices of plays, or of Venus and 
Adonis, are all the mentions up to the issue of the 2nd 
Folio, 1632. Of the seventeen, two are of plays 
acted, by title; eight refer to single plays, without 
title, or to Venus and Adonis; and only six mention 
Shakespeare's name. That William Shakespeare, 
whether the name be applied to the author or the 
player, after the issue of the ist Folio, should be 
spoken of but six times in nine years, shows that the 
Folio had not gained much ground, and that there was 
little interest in either plays or author. The Prefatory 
Address and eulogies of the Folio were probably be- 
ginning to take effect, but still, up to 1632, not a soul 
testified that the Shakespeare plays were one whit 
superior to those of Beaumont, Jonson, Daniel, and a 
score of others. 

It must be constantly borne in mind that no edu- 
cated or cultured man up to 1623 knew who player 

* Even Richard Grant White said: "He had as much dehber- 
ate purpose in his breathing as in his play-writing". Studies in 
Shakespeare, 209. We have before seen that Mr. White thinks 
the plays written simply to fill the theater and the man's 
pocket. Truly a worthy object of inspiration! 



RKI^ERKNCES TO SHAKESPKARE. , 303 

Sliaksper was, any more than wlio author "Shake- 
speare" was; one was as much unknown to the read- 
ing world as the other. The FoHo claimed that the 
author and player were one, and nobody seemed to 
care whether they were or not. 

Ingleby's third period runs from 1632 to 1642. I 
might go on and analyze his references for this ten 
years, but the result would be the same as before. 
Shakespeare, Beaumont and others continue to be 
classed together, and single plays, or Venus and 
Adonis, are now and then mentioned. One author, 
Hey wood, p. 202, apostrophizes "mellifluous Shake- 
speare", etc., meaning player Shaksper, and of this I 
have spoken. On p. 209, Sir John Suckling says: 
* 'My friend, Mr. William Shakespeare, makes Henry 
Hotspur quarrel", etc., referring to the Folio. The 
expression "my friend" could have no reference to 
the player, for Suckling was but a child when the 
Player died, and of course, had no acquaintance with 
him. 

So far as can be discovered, up to 1642, the reputa- 
tion of the plays, twice published in Folio, had not 
advanced one particle. They were scarcely ever acted, 
and people were forgetting all about them. Then 
came the Commonwealth, when play-acting was for- 
bidden by law, and at the Restoration, in 1660, the 
Shakespeare Plays had become antiquated, and offended 
the taste of the new generation of play-goers. 



304 shaksp:SR not shakb^spi^are). 

CHAPTER XL 

THE FIRST FOIvIO. 

1^0 return to the First Folio, and the elegiac verses 
prefixed to it, signed B. J. and Ben Jonson, (Ing. 47). 
Jonson, later in life, in his published works, speaks of 
player Shaksper, but what he said was entirely out of 
accord with the expressions given in these verses. The 
latter are entitled: 

"To the memory of my beloved, the author, Mr. 
William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us." 

' 'To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name 
Am I thus ample to thy books and fame; 
While I confess thy writings to be such 
As neither man nor Muse can praise too much. 
' Tis true, and all men's suffrage. ''' 

Evidently this last clause means that the plays of 
Shakespeare are beyond praise, and this was the gen- 
eral opinion of them in 1623, ("all men's suffrage"). 

' 'I therefore will begin : Soul of the Age 
The applause, delight and wonder of our stage: 
My Shakespeare rise: I will not lodge thee by 
Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie 
A little further to make thee a room. 
Thou art a monument without a tomb, 
Thou art alive still while thy books do live 
And we have wits to read and praise to give. 



THK FIRST FOI.IO. S^S 

For though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, 

From thence to honor thee I would not seek 

For names; but call forth thundering ^schylus, 

Euripides aud Sophocles to us, 

Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, 

To life again to hear thy buskin tread. 

And shake 'a stage; or, when thy socks were on 

Leave thee alone for the comparison 

Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome 

Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. 

Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show 

To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe, 

He was not for an age, but for all time. 

Nature herself was proud of her designs, 
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines 
Which were so richly spun and woven so fit 
As, since she will vouchsafe no other wit, 
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes, 
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please 
But antiquated and deserted lie 
As if they were not of Nature's family. 
Yet I must not give Nature all; thy art 
3Ty gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part; 
For though the poet's matter nature be, 
His art doth give the fashion; and that he 
Who casts to write a living life must sweat 
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat 
Upon the Muse's anvil; turn the same 
(And himself with it), that he thinks to frame 
Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn. 
For a good poet 's made, as well as born; 
And such wert thou: Look how the father's face 
Lives in his issue, even so the race 
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines 
In his well-turned and true-filed lines 
In each of which he seems to shake a lance 
As brandished at the eyes of Ignorance, 



3o6 SHAKSPER NOT shakkspkare;. 

Sweet Swan of Avon, what a sight it were 
To see thee on our waters yet appear! 

Shine forth thou Star of Poets, and with rage, 

Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage, 

Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night 

And despairs day, but for thy volumes light". 

Dr. Ingleby ponders over this glowing tribute, and 
appropriating it to Shaksper, remarks: "One could 
wish that Ben had said all this in Shakespeare's" 
(Shaksper's) ' 'lifetime' ' . 

It is certain that William Shaksper was not one of 
Jonson's beloved, and more, that during a considerable 
part of the careers of these men, and especially the 
last part, they were at variance. Fleay, 31, says: 
"No intercourse can be shown between Shakespeare 
and Jonson after 1603". ^'^ p. 81: "It is to be hoped 
that these two great dramatists were not at open en- 
mity during the latter part of Shakespeare's life, but 
all record of any real friendship between them ends in 
1603, a7zd little value is to be attributed either to the 
vague traditions of Jonson's visiting him at Stratford 
(16 1 6) ox to the abicndant praises lavished on him by 
Jonsoii in contniendatory verses after his deaths Jonson 
was always impecunious, and always ready to under- 
take any literary job. The syndicate of printers who 
published the Folio (with no authority from the rep- 
resentatives of the late William Shaksper, ex-proprie- 
tor of the Globe theater) , wanted an eulogistic prefa- 
tory address in verse, and got it. 

Who wrote the Shakespeare plays, the world knows 
not yet. Scarcely an earnest effort has been made to 



th:^ first FOI.IO. 307 

ascertain the truth, and then mainly by those who at- 
tribute the authorship to Francis Bacon. The vast 
majority of Hterary men have been content hitherto 
to accept the traditional authorship of William Shak- 
sper, who could not possibly have written one page of 
manuscript. But many distinguished Shakespearean 
scholars have not hesitated to assign parts of several 
of these plays, and whole plays, to another author 
than the one always in mind when the name ' 'Shake- 
speare' ' is spoken, that is, the man who wrote Ham- 
let. Thus Fleay, 280, says: "That the play of Titus 
Andronicus is not by Shakespeare is pretty certain 
from internal evidence." He thinks "the opinion 
that Kyd wrote the play worth the examination, al- 
though with such evidence as has as yet been ad- 
duced, Marlowe has certainly the better claim." 

On p. 257, he expresses the opinion that Henry 
VIII is chiefly by Fletcher and Massinger; on 255, 
that I Henry VI was written by Peele, Marlowe and 
others; on 209, that 2d Henry VI was by Marlowe, 
Greene, Kyd and Peele; and 3d Henry VI was by 
Marlowe; on 278, that Richard III was by Marlowe, 
but left incomplete at his death; on 242, that Timon of 
Athens unquestionably contains much matter by other 
hands; on 233, that Macbeth contains one scene, 11, 
5, which is not by Shakespeare; on 224, that very lit- 
tle of the Shrew is Shakespeare's. Mr. Fleay consid- 
ers the name "Shakespeare" as that of an indi- 
vidual, yet, as appears, holds that a considerable por- 
tion of the plays attributed to him in the Folio, and 
warranted by Heminge and Condell to be the work of 



308 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKESPEARE;. 

their fellow, William Shaksper, of Stratford, was the 
work of several other authors. 

Professor Wendell in these matters generally agrees 
with Fleay; on p. 345, he says: "In both Timon and 
Pericles there is much matter believed not to be by 
Shakspere. . . . Just what part he had in these 
plays — ^whether he planned, or retouched, or collabo- 
rated — nobody can determine. ' ' 

Judge Stotsenburg, Ind. News, 26 May, 1897, ad- 
vance sheets of his book, "How I sought and found 
Shakespeare", has discussed at length the play of 
Titus Andronicus, and his conclusion is that, ' 'Upon 
a thorough and full examination of the play, tested by 
the index words and phrases, I am of the opinion that 
Marlowe was the author. ' ' And he adds that Samuel 
Johnson, Hallam, Verplanck, Malone, Steevens, Bos- 
well, Seymour and other critics and commentators 
were fully agreed that this play was not written by 
Shakespeare. 

Now there are many Shakespearean students who 
hold "Shakespeare" to have been a collective name, 
standing for the work of a band, or society, or club of 
authors of the later Elizabethan period, who wrote 
singly or in collaboration, every man of them from 
the Universities. This accounts for the unexplained 
(on the single author theory) marked differences in 
style, words, phrases; for the vast vocabulary, prepos- 
terous, if attributed to one individual, to the pro- 
ficiency in every department of knowledge, law, med- 
icine, philosophy, and the rest; to the amalgamation 
and consubstantiation of the lyatin and Greek lan- 
guages with the native thought of the writers, etc. 



1*HK F'IRST F-OIvlO. 309 

From this point of view, the inclusion of Titus, the 
three Henry VI, Richard III, Henry VIII, Timon, 
and Pericles, The Taming of a Shrew, is understand- 
able; from the other point of view, it is not; from 
this point of view, the work of Marlowe had as much 
right to be in the Folio, as the work of the author of 
Hamlet. 

Judge Stotsenburg is on the path; for it is only by 
minute analysis of the several plays, and by compari- 
son with the recognized works of different play-wrights 
of that period, that the real authors of any particular 
Shakespeare play can be discovered. Once eliminate 
the Stratford clown, and before long it will be known 
who did write these plays.* 

It is fair to presume that one of the authors, at 
least, was living in 1623, he who wrote Othello. Who 
but one of the band could have identified the true 
plays, out of the many which during thirty years had 
gone by the name of Shakespeare? And who else 

® Mr. T. W. White, author of "Our English Homer", Lon- 
don, 1892, is a believer in the collective authorship, and places 
the plays as follows: 

Love's Labour 's Lost to Robert Greene. 

Comedy of Errors, same. 

Winter's Tale, to Robert Greene, and Thomas Nash. 

Midsummer Night's Dream, Geo. Peele, and Michael Drayton. 

Richard III, to Christopher Marlowe. 

Henry VI, 2 and 3, to Christopher Marlowe. 

Hamlet, to Erancis Bacon. 

Romeo and Juliet, to Samuel Daniel. 

As You Like It, to Thomas Lodge. 

Taming of the Shrew, Samuel Daniel, or Michael Drayton. 

Richard II, to same. 



310 SHAKSPE^R NOf ShAKEISPE^ARB^. 

could have pronounced on the spurious plays? A 
generation had passed since these plays had begun to 
appear, and no living man, except one of the authors, 
could have known what was written. Who but one of 
the band, could have handed to the publishers nine 
plays which no one but himself or associates had ever 
seen or heard of; or could have got ready for printing, 
in 1623, as many other plays, re- written, revised, ex- 
tended, which had been acted years before in some 
abbreviated form, but never printed. 

The plays first printed in the Folio were: Two Gen- 
tlemen of Verona, ist Henry VI, All's Well That 
Ends Well, Comedy of Errors, As You I^ike It, 
Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, King John, 
Cymbeline, The Winter' s Tale, Henry VIII, Macbeth, 
The Tempest, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony 
and Cleopatra. 

Dowden says, p. 134: "The Folio is the sole author- 
ity for seventeen plays". Halliwell-Phillipps says, I, 
290: "Out of the thirty-six dramas which they 
(Heminge and Condell) collected, one-half had never 
been printed in any shape". The play of Othello 
had been published in Quarto the year before (1622), 
entered in the Stationer's Register, in 162 1; but when 
the Folio issued, behold Othello enlarged, revised and 
divided into acts and scenes (which had not been done 
in the Quarto!) Knight says of this play: "On the 6th 
of Oct., 1 62 1, Thomas Walker entered at Stationer's 
Hall 'The Tragedie of Othello, the More of Venice'. 
In 1622, Walker published the edition for which he 
had thus claimed the copyright. It is a small Quarto. 
. , . The Folio edition, 1623, is regularly divided 



^he; first folio. 311 

into acts and scenes; the Quarto edition has not a 
single indication of anj^ subdivision in the acts, and 
omits the division between Acts 2 and 3. The Folio 
edition contains 163 lines, which are not found in the 
Quarto, and these are some of the most striking in the 
pla5^ The number of lines found in the Quarto, 
which are not in the Folio, do not amount to ten." 
Knight's Shakespeare, Othello. 

Ruggles says, 579: "The ground- work of Othello is 
found in Cinthio's novel of 'The Moorish Captain', of 
which no translation into English is known earlier 
than of Parr, in 1795. The poet, no doubt, took the 
story from the original Italian", etc. Then that poet 
was not William Shaksper, and from the facts above 
stated, it is plain that the poet was living in 1622-3! 

"Few of us dream how vast were the emendations 
and revisions, enlargements and corrections, of the 
old Shakespearean plays given to the world in this 
Folio of 1623. Mr. R. G. White says, that in 
I^ove's Labour 's I^ost, there are inserted new lines in 
almost every speech. Another, the Merry Wives of 
Windsor, according to Knight, has doubled the num- 
ber of lines it originally possessed in 1600. The 
Henry V has 1900 new lines. The Titus Androni- 
cus has an entire new scene; and Much Ado About 
Nothing, and lycar, are so alterated and elabo- 
rated, with curtailments here and enlargements there 
as to lead Mr. Knight to declare that none but the 
hand of the master could have super-added them", 
Morgan, 234. 

Yet, in 1623, player Shaksper had been dead seven 
years,- and according to Phillipps, the facts lead ir- 



312 SHAKSPEJR NOT shak:Ssp:^ar:^. 

resistibly to the conclusion that the poet (Shaksper) 
abandoned literary occupation a considerable period 
before his decease, and in all probability when he dis- 
posed of his theatrical property. 'This disposal took 
place in 1610-11. Therefore, if he wrote the plays, 
in addition to the labor so involved, he was spending 
the busiest years of his life, when he was strolling 
through the land, or living in London as player, 
manager, and theater proprietor, his whole soul ab- 
sorbed in money-making, in the unremunerative work 
of first writing the original plays, then enlarging and 
revising them with a view to "their literary perfec- 
tion", as Swinburne says; and finally, in writing a 
long series of grand new plays, that were not to see 
the light for years to come, and which he did not in- 
tend to have played in his own or any theater, but to 
have printed for a very different public than he had 
ever catered to in his life-time. All this labor had to 
be done before the end of 16 10, and the plays deposited 
somewhere, so that when a posthumous edition of his 
works should come to be published, the printers would 
know where to find them in complete order for print- 
ing. The mere statement of the case is a demonstra- 
tion of its impossibility. And where in the scheme 
does the Othello come — printed in Quarto in 1622, 
taken in hand by somebody, greatly enlarged and re- 
vised, divided into Acts snd Scenes, and published in 
the Folio, 1623. 

Who was living in 1622-23, who could do that 
work ? Whoever he was, he had it in him to write 
the best of the Shakespeare plays. 

The spurious plays are called by Symonds "Doubt- 



The; mrst folio. 313 

ful Plays", and he devotes Chapter 10 to their con- 
sideration. He starts with this bold assumption, "We 
know that before Shakspere (meaning Stratford Shak- 
sper) began his great series of authentic and undis- 
puted dramas, he spent some years of strenuous ac- 
tivity as a journej^men for the company of players he 
had joined." Which was just after he had put off 
his butcher's apron, and had fled with his patois to 
London. 

Now it happens that "we" do not know anything 
of the sort alleged by Mr. Symonds; we assume it, 
for the reason that in order to father the Shakespeare 
plays on this man, we have to get him at work — 
strenuous work — as soon as he reaches lyondon. As 
to the proof of Mr. Symonds' assertion, there is none 
whatever — it comes from what Mr. Fleay calls "a mis- 
chievously fertile imagination. ' ' Mr. Symonds is puz- 
zled with the Doubtful Plays. They are all in some 
respects after the style of the author of the received 
Shakespeare plays, and all in some respects are in the 
style of various other authors. Mr. Symonds thinks 
that the author of the Shakespeare plays may have 
had a hand in them, either as a restorer, or as a col- 
laborator, or that they have been trial essays in some 
other veins of work abandoned by him. In this last 
case they would be genuine Shakespeare plays. Had 
no collection of the plays been made in 1623, it would 
have been impossible for the critics of the 19th cen- 
tury to form a list of the Shakespeare plays. Some 
of the now received plays would have been struck out, 
and some of the doubtful plays have taken their places. 
The remarkable thing is that, in 1623, some one 



3l4 . SHAKSPE^R NOT SHAKE;SPKAR1;. 

should have been at hand to point out unerringly what 
were the true Shakespeare plays — several of them dating 
back thirty years, and nearly all of them over twenty, 
and should have rejected every one of the plays which 
puzzled Mr. Symonds. It is not to be believed that the 
fellow-players of William Shaksper, underlings at the 
Globe, butchers, and bakers, and candlestick-makers, 
and ranking with buffoons and tumblers, would know 
anything of the matter. The decision as to which 
plays were genuine and which spurious was that of 
some man who knew all about it — the same man who 
handed to the printers sixteen or seventeen plays, as 
"Shakespeare's", which had never before been pub- 
lished, half the number entirely new. Taken in con- 
nection with the fact of the Othello, this man could 
only have been the author of more or less of the 
Shakespeare plays, and he was living in 1623. 

When the Folio volume, to embrace about two score 
plays, old and new, the former of which had been 
printed in Quarto twenty to thirty years before, was 
planned, these old plays had been almost, and many 
of them quite, forgotten. Between 16 16, when Shak- 
sper died, and 1623, there is no mention of any of 
them in Ingleby; and between 1591, when Ingleby's 
Centurie begins, and 16 16, half of them had been 
mentioned but once or twice in all literature. Several 
of the plays had been printed under names of William 
Shakespeare, or Shake-speare, or Shakespere, but who 
the man was who was thus concealed, no one knew. 
A generation had passed since the name first appeared 
(in 1593) upon the title page of a poem. Five years 
later it had been put tentatively upon the new edition 



The; f^irst f'oi.io. 315 

of an old play, and finally came to be used upon new 
plays by different authors or on new editions of old 
plays. Thus Love's I^abour's Lost (Greene?), 1598, 
"By WilHam Shakspere"; Richard III (Marlowe), 
1598, "By William Shake-speare"; Sir John Oldcastle 
(unknown) , 1 600, ' 'Written by William Shakespeare' ' ; 
A Yorkshire Tragedy (unknown), 1608, "Written by 
William Shakespeare" ; Edward III, (Marlowe), 1600; 
The London Prodigal, (unknown) 1605 — both by 
"William Shakespeare", etc., etc. 

Certain of these plays it was now proposed to pub- 
lish, together with others which had been obtained 
from an unknown source, brand new plays, or elab- 
orate revisions of the old ones. The whole business 
was left unexplained in 1623, and the ensuing centu- 
ries have brought no light. We may suppose, then, 
that the printers wanted a figure-head, some one to 
stand sponsor for the volume, and they found a man 
whose name came handy for the purpose, and who was 
unknown to any of the literary men of that age, how- 
ever well he had been known to the rabble, one Will- 
iam Shaksper, who had made a fortune by running 
the Globe theater, and years ago had retired to Strat- 
ford-on-Avon, whence he came. One thing was cer- 
tain, that if no one could say that he had written 
them, on the other hand, no one could say that he 
had not. Thanks to Dr. Ingleby and Halliwell-Phil- 
lipps, we, in 1900, know a hundred times more of this 
Shaksper than any reading man in England could 
have known in 1623. So he was adopted, and, by 
every means in their power, the printers aimed to im- 
press upon the public that here was the original 



3l6 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPE^AR:^. 

Jacobs — the Shakespeare of the Venus and Adonis, 
and the Shakespeare of the plays, Ben Jonson's 
facile pen was employed to write a Dedication and Ad- 
dress to the readers over the names of two players, 
who, years ago, had been fellows of this Shaksper, 
and some eulogistic lines above his own initials. Sev- 
eral penny-a-liners were also invited to contribute their 
rhyming encomiums. It is conceivable that survivors 
of the band of authors who had written between 1593 
and 1608 under the common soubriquet of "William 
Shakespeare", who were living in 1623, were not un- 
willing to assist in the publication, though still con- 
cealing their authorship, for the odium attached to play- 
writiug was as great in 162J as it had been a score of 
years before. But if this were so, they overlooked 
the fact that 

"The sluggish gaping auditor . . . 
Marks not whose 't was first, and after times 
May judge it to be his." 

Or perhaps they trusted to the assurance expressed 
in the remainder of these lines : 

"Fool, as if half eyes will not know a fleece 
From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece." 

Doubtless it was a matter of indifference to them 
that Jonson should be called on by the printers for 
lines to introduce the cut of the supposititious author 
which prefaces the Folio. Whether that was a like- 
ness of William Shaksper, or a caricature, no one can 
now tell. If the Stratford bust resembled the man, 
the Folio head did not. One or the other was a fraud. 



THE) FIRST FOI<IO. 317 

They represented two individuals, without one feature 
in common. But as by general consent the Shak- 
spereans have to-day fixed on the Folio head as a gen- 
uine likeness, even going so far as to have a bust in 
imitation of it carved for the Congressional Library, 
outsiders may accept it for what it pretends to be. 
In a gallery of showmen this figure might hold its 
own; in a gallery of poets it is painfull)^ out of place. 
Shaksper's ability as a manager of a public theater, 
and as a money-maker, was considerable, but by a few 
ironical lines of a genuine poet he was transformed 
into the greatest of poets, and the showman and 
money-making phases are quite forgotten. Jonson 
had known the man well, and it must have been with 
peculiar delight that he undertook the job. So he 
begins: 

"This figure tliat thou here seest put, 
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut, 
Wherein the graver had a strife 
"With nature to outdo the life: 
O, could he but have drawn his Wit 
As well in brass as he hath hit 
His face, the Print would then surpass 
All that was ever wrote in Brass. ' ' 

This play upon the word "Brass" can have but one 
meaning, namel)^, to intimate that the impudent as- 
sumption that these plays were written by the man 
whose head is here given, is brazen, and Jonson ac- 
cordingly appended these lines of advice to the Reader: 

' 'But since he cannot, Reader look 
Not at his Picture, but his Book," 



3i8 shakspb;r not shakbspe;arb. 

As clear a hint as could be given, that all pretense 
that the writer of these plays was that sort of man 
was foolery. The word ' 'gentle' ' we may understand 
to be aimed at Shaksper's abortive attempt at coat- 
armour, in order to make himself a titular gentleman. 

Mr. John Corbin says on these lines: "They have 
usually been taken as high praise of the print; but 
the fact that commendatory verses were one of the 
commonest literary customs of the time, distinctly 
lessens their value. The phrasing of the second 
couplet, moreover, was hackneyed enough in the time 
of Elizabeth, and far from being fulsome of praise, is 
little more than a metrical rendering of 'This is a por- 
trait of Shakespeare'. The rest of the poem reduced to 
common parlance, says, that since the graver has 
failed to express Shakespeare's (Shaksper's) soul as 
well as he has drawn his features, we must turn to the 
plays to find the real author," Harper's Magazine, 
Apr., 1897. ^r. Corbin has hit it exactly. The en- 
graver has drawn Shaksper's features, but in them is 
nothing of the soul of "Shakespeare". To find the 
real author, Mr. Corbin well says ' 'we must turn to 
the plays." 

Not merely were commendatory verses prefixed to 
a book, in that age, but figure-heads, pseudo-like- 
nesses, or caricatures of the author were customary 
also. 

"Deceptive and vaunting title-pages were practiced 
to such excess that Tom Nash, an 'Author by Pro- 
fession', never fastidiously modest, blushed at the title 
of his 'Pierce Pennilesse', which the publishers had 
flourished in the first edition, like 'a tedious mounte- 



the; first foi<io. 319 

bank'. The booksellers forged great names to recom- 
mend their works. 'It was an usual thing in those 
days,' says honest Anthony Wood, 'to set a great 
name to a book, by the sharking booksellers or 
snivelling writers, to get bread' ". Disraeli, Calamities 
of Authors. 

(I cut from N. Y. Tribune of 10 Feby., 1899, this 
slip: "Among the Hard wicke papers, to be sold within 
a few daj^s, is a letter in which Dean Percy writes in 
1781" (150 years after the First Folio of the Shake- 
speare plays appeared) "In the book-making art the 
celebrity of name is of so much consequence that it 
is not unusual for the Trade to hire a popular name to 
be prefixed to a work which the owner of that name 
never saw. Poor Goldsmith picked up many a 
Guinea by this kind of Trafl&c, and we have accord- 
ingly a Grecian History, a version of Scarron, and 
many other things, which, to the best of my belief, he 
was utterly unconcerned in.") 

Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, published shortly 
before this Folio, (1621), has in its front a pseudo- 
likeness of Democritus Junior, the pretended author. 
The Preface begins thus: — 

"Gentle reader, I presume you will be inquisitive to 
know what antic or personate actor this is, that so in- 
solently intrudes upon this common theater, to the 
world's view, arrogating another man's name; whence 
he is, why he doth it, and what he hath to say . 
. I would not willingly be known. . . . 'T is for 
no such respect I shroud myself under his name; but 
in an unknown habit to assume a little more Hberty 
and freedom of speech," 



320 shakspe;r not shakespbark. 

As to the figure-head, he says: "It is a kind of pol- 
icy in these days, to prefix a fantastical title (cut) to 
a book which is to be sold; for, as larks come down to 
a day-net, many vain readers will tarry and stand gaz- 
ing like silly passengers at an antic picture in a paint- 
er's shop, that will not look at a judicious piece." 
Accompanying the figure-head are these lines: 

"Now last of all, to fill a space 
Presented is the author's face. 
His mind no one can well express, 
That by his writing you may guess. 
It is not pride . . . 
Made him do this, if you must know 
The Printer would need have it so. ' ' 

The writers of the Shakespeare plays concealed 
their personality in order "to assume a little more lib- 
erty and freedom of speech". When it came to pub- 
lishing the collected plays in the Folio, the printers 
would need have some sort of figure-head to represent 
the author "Shakespeare", and, as we have seen, 
Jonson was emplo3'-ed to write lines introducing it. 
Also he was employed to write a rhyming Preface. 
Never in the history of literature was such another 
preface written. Consider that up to 1616, and while 
the player Shaksper was alive, and the plays were 
issuing, and from 1616 to 1623, when the Folio was 
published, not one single contemporary showed by his 
mention of the plays of William Shakespeare, that 
he held them to be anything out of the common, or 
better than the works of half a dozen other play- 
wrights nearly always enumerated in connection with 



the; p'irst FOI.IO. 321 

Shakespeare. Therefore, Jouson's rhyming preface be- 
gins with what was so manifestly a lie, if intended to be 
understood literally, that it is evident the writer meant 
exactly the reverse of what his words say. Your 
plays are beyond praise, everybody is talking of them, 
and the sicffrage of all '}ne7i is that never was there any- 
thing like it in literature. Whereas the fact was that 
nobody talked of them, not a soul had held them to 
be superior to the works of other men, up to 1623. 
If, in 1 61 6, they had dropped out of existence, no 
one would have known it, or missed them. Strange 
as this may seem to the nineteenth century worshipers 
of Shakespeare, the fact is as I give it, and the Ingleby 
references bear me out. The plays were not written 
for the 1 6th century, but for future ages, they were 
over the heads of nearly all people then living, and it 
is only in the 19 th century that they have come to be 
appreciated. As Dr. Ingleby declares in his Preface: 
"We are at length slowly rounding to a just estimate 
of his works. ' ' 

(I have before quoted Ingleby's remark that for a 
full hundred years from the first appearance of a 
Shakespeare play, no one held Shakespeare to be sui 
genei is) . 

Thus Richard Carew, 1595-6, Ing. 20: — "The Mira- 
cle of our age, Sir Philip Sidney. '"^^ 

Francis Meres, 1598, Ing. 21, puts together Spenser, 
Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and 
Chapman. 

* ' 'As a series of sonnets, the Astrophel and Stella are second 
only to Shakespeare; as a series of love-poems, they are perhaps 
unsurpassed.,' Craik, Eng. I^it. 



322 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARS. 

Edmund Bolton, 1610, Ing. 91: "But among the 
chief, or rather the chief are in my opinion, these, 
Shakespeare, Beaumont, and innumerable other writers 
for the stage. ' ' 

John Webster, 1612, Ing. 100: "For mine owne 
part, I have ever truly cherished my good opinion of 
other men's worthy I^abours, especially of that full 
and haightened stile of maister Chapman; the labor' d 
and understanding works of maister Johnson; The 
no less worthy composure of the both worthily ex- 
cellent Maister Beaumont and Maister Fletcher; And, 
lastly (without wrong last to be named), the right 
happy and copious industry of M. Shake-speare, M. 
Decker and M. Heywood." 

John Webster, according to Swinburne, Enc. Brit. , 
was "the greatest of Shakespeare's contemporaries 
. a tragic poet and dramatist of the very fore- 
most rank in the very highest class. . . . The 
Duchess of Malfy stands out among its compeers as 
one of the imperishable and ineradicable landmarks of 
literature. The transcendent imagination and the im- 
passioned sympathy which inspire this most tragic 
of all tragedies save King Lear, are fused together in 
the fourth act into a creation which has hardly been 
excelled for unflagging energy of expression and of 
pathos in all the dramatic or poetic literature of the 
world." Webster's plays date from 1601 to 1624. 
Will it be believed that in all the writings of this great 
contemporary of ' 'Shakespeare' ' , a resident of lyondon 
also, the mention of Shakespeare above given is the 
only one, and that there is nowhere a mention or an 
allusion to the works of Shakespeare! As to the 



the; first foivIO. 323 

player, there is absolute silence, as was to be expected. 
All that John Webster had to say of the poet was that 
he had ever cherished a good opinion of his right 
happy and copious industry, and lumps him with two 
second rate and voluminous writers, Decker and 
Hey wood. 

William Camden, 1608, Ing. 59: "If I should come 
to our time, what a world could I present you out of 
Sir Philip Sidney, Kd. Spenser, Samuel Daniel, Hugh 
Holland, Ben Jonson, Th. Campion, Mich. Drayton, 
George Chapman, John Marston, William Shakespeare, 
and other tnore pregnant wits of these our times whom 
succeeding ages may justly admire." Here Shake- 
speare is classed with several poets, the names of some 
of whom are now known only to the antiquary, and 
all are spoken of as if they were on the same level; 
and moreover there were other poets "more preg- 
nant than those enumerated." 

In 1620, John Taylor wrote thus (133): 

"Sir Philip Sidney, who the laurel wore,^ 
Spenser and Shakespeare did in art excel, 
Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel, 
Silvester, Beaumont, Sir John Harrington, 
Forgetfulness their works would overrun 
But that in paper they immortally 
Do live, in spite of death, and cannot die." 

"We do not look for Shakespeare's name in books 
and poetry which were issued before 1593, when his 

■•■■ Ivee says, 429: "Sidney enjoyed in the decade that followed 
his death the reputation of a demi-god, and the wide dissemina- 
tion in print of his numerous sonnets in 1591 spurred nearly 
every living poet in Bngland to emulate his achievements." 



324 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. 

Venus and Adonis, 'the first heir of my invention', 
was issued; so that we are not surprised at the silence 
of Sir WilHam Webb (1586), George Puttenham 
(1589), Sir John Harrington (1591), Sir PhiHp Sid- 
ney (1595), and Lodge (1596). Shakespeare could 
hardly have been known to any of them. But the 
case is otherwise with works of the same character 
issued as late as 1596, the year in which were pub- 
lished Thomas Lodge's Wits Miserie, and the World's 
Madness, where among the divine wits, we do not find 
the name of Shakespeare. Similarly, in 1598, was 
published Edward Guilpin's collection of satires called 
'Skialethea', the sixth of which contains the names 
of Chaucer, Gower, Daniel, Markham, Drayton and 
Sidney, but not that of Shakespeare. Ben Jonson, 
writing some forty years later, makes the same re- 
markable omission in one part of his 'Discoveries' ; he 
remarks that as it is fit to read the best authors to 
youth first, so let them be of the openest and clearest; 
and he distinguishes how Sidney, Donne, Chaucer and 
Spenser should be read — but does not mention Shake- 
speare. Richard Carew assigns the first place to Sid- 
ney; Davidson and a host of others set an extravagant 
value on Daniel. The elder Basse, Taylor, and Ed- 
ward Phillipps seem to put Spenser and Shakespeare 
on an equality." Ingleby, Preface. 

"It is singular, if we rely upon several coeval au- 
thorities, how little our great dramatist was, about 
this period, known and admired for his plays. Rich- 
ard Barnfeild published his 'Encomion of Lady 
Pecunia', in 1598, (the year in which the list of twelve 



THS FIRST FOIvIO. 325 

of Shakespeare's plays were printed by Meres) . . . 
and we quote the following notice of Shakespeare: 

And Shakespeare thou, whose honey-flowing vein, 
Pleasing the world, thy praises doth contain. 
Whose Venus and whose Lucrece, sweet and chaste. 
Thy name in Fame's immortal book hath placed. 

Here Shakespeare's popularity as pleasing the world 
is noticed, but the proofs of it are not derived from 
the stage, etc. 

Precisely to the same effect, but a still stronger in- 
stance, we may refer to a play in which both Burbage 
and Kempe are introduced as characters, the one of 
whom had obtained such celebrity in the tragic, and 
the other in the comic parts of Shakespeare's dramas; 
we allude to the Return from Parnassus, which was in- 
disputably acted before the death of Queen Elizabeth. 
In a scene where two young students are discussing 
the merits of particular poets, one of them thus speaks 
of Shakespeare: 

"Who loves Adonis' love or Lucrece rape 
His sweeter verse contains heart-robbing life, ' ' etc. 

Not the most distant allusion is made to any of his 
dramatic productions. . . . Hence we might be 
led to imagine, that, even down to as late a period as 
the commencement of the 17th century, the reputa- 
tion of Shakespeare depended rather upon his poems 
than upon his plays; almost as if productions for the 
stage were not looked upon, at that date, as part of 
the recognized literature of the country." Collier, 
Life, XLVII. 

It is plain that up to the date of the Folio, 1623, 



326 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKiESPEARK. 

the poems and plays of Shakespeare were regarded by 
no one as being superior to the poems and plays of a 
dozen other authors.* Between 1592, when the first 
Shakespeare play is said to have been performed, and 
1623, they are not spoken of in all English I^iterature 
more than twice a year, and as I have before said, 
Shakespeare by name, under any kind of spelling, was 
mentioned in the twenty-four years (1592 to 1616) but 
twenty times, or less than once a year. Think of it; 
an age prolific of poets and prose writers, and diaries 
and note- books; an age devoted to epistolary corre- 
spondence; and the great Shakespeare was spoken 
of {teste Ingleby), but twenty times in the twenty- 
four years during which William Shaksper is supposed 
by his followers to have been writing and publishing 
the plays afterwards gathered into the Folio. Plainly, 
as an individual he was unknown, and as a poet or 
play- writer he was almost unknown, and wholly un- 
appreciated, as Ingleby declares was the fact. 

If any poet of that day was held in special venera- 
tion, it was Sidney, the author of Astrophel and 
Stella, and not improbably, the author of the Sonnets 
ascribed to "Shakespeare". Twice is he mentioned 
in the references of Ingleby as apart from and above 
all other poets of that age; whereas "Shakespeare" is 
never so spoken of, but is always ranked with the 
common herd. Moreover the poems — the V. and A. 

* Yet Dr. A. H. Strong, in his very interesting book, ' 'The 
Great Poets and their Theology, Phila., 1897," can say of Shake- 
speare: "His pre-eminence as a dramatist and poet was uni- 
versally acknowledged," /. ^., when he retired from the theater, 
161 1, to his death, 1616. 



the; first folio. 327 

and lyucrece — ^were considered to be on a much higher 
plane than the plays. On this, H.-P., I, 119, says: 
' 'The contemporaries of Shakespeare allude more than 
once to the poems as being his most important works, 
and as those on which his literary reputation chiefly 
rested". 

Jonson had a high appreciation of his own plays, and 
would have scorned the suggestion that those of 
Shakespeare stood on a level with them — much more 
on a higher level. In one of Du Manner's cuts, a 
young woman asks an author if he ever reads novels. 
The emphatic reply is, "No, I write them". As a 
rule authors do not read the works of each other, in 
the same line, and it is safe to say that Jonson never 
read, or even looked at, the proof or text of the Folio 
to which he was about to act as sponser. He was a 
busy man, and besides had a way of spending his 
spare hours at the Mermaid. That he had no great 
opinion of the Shakespeare Plays is evident from the 
fact that in his own plays he repeatedly sneered at one 
or other of them. As to praise of them, or approval 
of them, there is not a syllable in Jonson' s works. In 
the Prologue to "Every Man in His Humour," he ridi- 
cules Henry VI and the Winter's Tale. In the Intro- 
duction to Bartholomew Fair, he does the same to the 
Tempest. In his Ode, appended to the New Inn, he 
styles Pericles "a mouldy tale, and nasty as the fish- 
scraps out of every dish thrown forth and raked into 
the common tub." In the "Poetaster" he scolds at 
the new-coined words with which the Shakespeare 
works were sprinkled. In 1 619, he told Drummond 
that Shakespeare wanted art. 



328 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKBJSPlJARK. 

After tlie issue of the Folio, notwithstanding what 
he had said in the vel-ses thereto prefixed, in the 
enumeration of all the wits he had known (or of his 
time) "who could honor a language or help study", 
left behind him at his death (1637), he makes no 
mention of Shakespeare or his works — actually forgot 
him and them ! * 

It shows that Shakespeare was not appreciated in 
his own age; nor was he thought anything superior 
during the rest of the 17th century, and indeed, dur- 
ing most of the i8th century. 

In 1 66 1, Evelyn noted in his diary that he saw 
Hamlet played; "but the old plays begin to disgust 
this refined age". Pepys, 30 Sept., 1662, records: 
"To the King's Theater, where we saw Midsummer 
Night's Dream, which I had never seen before, nor 
ever shall again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous 
play that ever I saw in my life". 166 1-2: March i: 
"To the Opera and there saw Romeo and Juliet. . . . 
It is a play of itself the worst that ever I heard in my 
hfe." 1662-3, Jan 6: "There saw 'Twelfth-Night' 
acted well, though it be but a sillj^ play." 1667, 
Nov. i: "My wife and myself to the King's Play- 
house, and there saw a silly play and an old one, 
'The Taming of a Shrew.' " 

*Jonson could scarcely have had a very high opinion of 
Shakespeare's genius, since a quarter of a century passed 
(1598-1623) before he pens a single line in his praise. And 
when at last the laudatory verses do appear, we are sure he was 
paid for writing them. His testimony is not, therefore, a 
spontaneous expression of his own sentiments, but a business 
advertisement." T. W. White, 162, 



the; first foIvIO. 329 

John Dryden, 1679, (Ing., 369), wrote thus: "It 
must be allowed to the present Age, that the tongue in 
general is so much refined since Shakespeare's time, 
that many of his words and more of his Phrases, are 
scarce intelligible. And of those which we under- 
stand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse, and his 
whole style is so pestered with Figurative expressions, 
that it is affected as it is obscure, . . . How de- 
fective Shakespear and Fletcher have been In all their 
plots, Mr. Rymer has discovered in his Criticisms. 
. . . In the mechanic beauties of the Plot, which 
are the Observation of the three Unities, Time, Place, 
and Action, they are both deficient; but Shakespeare 
most." And so Dryden undertook to re-write Troilus 
and Cressida — from the Preface to which play the re- 
marks above are taken. In his own words, "because 
there appeared in some places of it the admirable 
genius of the Author, I undertook to remove the heap 
of Rubbish under which many excellent thoughts lay 
wholly bury'd. ' ' 

On p. 350, 1672, Dryden says: *%et any man who 
understands English, read diligently the works of 
Shakespeare and Fletcher; and I dare undertake he 
will find in every page, either some solecism of speech, 
or some notorious flaw in sense. . . . That their 
wit is great and many times their expressions noble, 
envy itself cannot deny; but the times were ignorant 
in which they lived. Poetry was then, if not in its 
infancy among us, at least not arrived to its vigor and 
maturity; witness the lameness of their plots, etc. 
. . . Many of the rest, as The Winter's Tale, 
lyove's 'I^abour 's lyost, Measure for Measure, which 



330 SHAESPRR NOT SHAK:ESPKARK. 

were either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so 
mea7ily written that the Comedy neither caused your 
mirth, nor the serious part your concernment. . . . 
In reading some bombast speeches of Macbeth, which are 
7iot to be tmderstood, he (Ben Jonson) used to say that 
it was horrour, and I am much afraid that this is so. 
The wit of the last age was still more incor- 
rect than their language. Shakespeare, who many 
times has written better than any poet, in any lan- 
guage, is yet so far from writing wit always, or ex- 
pressing that wit according to the dignity of the sub- 
ject, that he writes in many places below the dullest 
writer of ours, or of any precedent age. . , . L<et 
us therefore admire the beauties and the heights of 
Shakespeare, without falling after him in a careless- 
ness, and, as I may call it, a lethargy of thought, for 
whole scenes together." And yet these criticisms 
were penned but fifty years after the publication of the 
Folio, and, twenty years earlier, the bombast speeches 
of Macbeth, "which are not to be understood" in 
Dryden's day, are imagined to have been spouted in 
Shaksper's public theaters, and comprehended by the 
rabble which frequented them! 

Thomas Rymer (i 661-17 13), published a "Short 
View of Tragedy". He was an eminent man of let- 
ters and a voluminous author both in verse and prose; 
in 1692, he was appointed by William and Mary his- 
toriographer royal. What Rymer says of Shake- 
speare in his ' 'Short View' ' , taken in connection with 
Dryden's criticism in the same century, and that of 
Johnson and Hume in the next century, may be con- 
sidered as expressing the opinion of most of the cul- 



tHB FIRSI" FOI,IO. 331 

tivated people of those times. Of Othello, Rymer 
says: "There is in this play some burlesque, some 
humor and ramble of comical wit, some show; and 
some mimicry to divert the spectators; but the tragical 
part is plainly none other than a bloody farce without 
salt or savor." Of Julius Csesar: "In the former 
play, our poet might be the bolder, the persons being 
all his own creatures and mere fiction. , . . He 
might be familiar with Othello and lago, as his own 
natural acquaintances; but Ccssar a7id Brutus were above 
his conversation. To put them in fools' coats, and 
make them Jack-puddings in the Shakespeare dress, 
is a sacrilege beyond anything in Spelman. The truth 
is, this author's head was full of villanous, unnatural 
images, and history has only furnished him with great 
names, thereby to recommend them to the world." 
Ing. 367. 

Dr. Johnson (1765) comments on the Shakespeare 
plays thus: 

Of Hamlet: "The pretended madness of Hamlet 
caused mirth. . . . The catastrophe is not very 
happily introduced. A scheme might easily be formed 
to kill Hamlet with the dagger and Laertes with the 
bowl." Johnson severely criticizes others of these 
plays; says of Antony and Cleopatra, that "it is low, 
and without any art of connection or care of disposi- 
tion." Of Cymbeline, he does not care "to waste 
criticism upon unresisting imbecility", etc. And 
the great Doctor tells us that if any of his contempo- 
raries were to write plays like those of Shakespeare, 
the audiences would not sit them out. 



332 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPEIARK. 

David Hume, Hist. Eng., App. to James I, 1764, 
said: — 

"If Shakespeare be considered as a man, born in a 
rude age, and educated in the lowest manner, without 
any instruction either from the world or from books, 
he may be regarded as a prodigy; if represented as a 
poet, capable of furnishing a proper entertainment to a 
refined or intelligent audience, we must abate much of 
the eulogy. ... A striking peculiarity of senti- 
ment, adapted to a single character, he frequently hits, 
as it were, by inspiration, but a reasonable propriety 
of thought he cannot for any time uphold. . . . It 
is in vain we look either for purity or simplicity of diction. 
His total ignorance of all theatrical art and conduct, etc. 

' 'A great and fertile genius he certainly possessed, 
and one enriched equally with a tragic and comic view; 
but he ought to be cited as a proof, how dangerous it 
is to rely on these advantages alone for attaining an 
excellence in the fine arts. And there may even re- 
main a suspicion that we overrate, if possible, the great- 
ness of his genius; in the same manner as bodies often 
appear more gigantic, on account of their being dis- 
proportioned and misshapen. . . . Both of them, 
(Shakespeare and Jonson) were equally deficient in taste 
and elegance, in harmony and character; and thence 
it has proceeded that the nation has undergone, from 
all its neighbors, the reproach of barbarism, from 
which its valuable productions in some other parts of 
learning would otherwise have exempted it." 

There was no time between 1592 and 1800 when the 
common run of people understood or appreciated the 
Shakespeare plays. Most of them were beyond the ca- 



'The; p'irsi' folio. 333 

pacity of the play-goers, and they might in large part 
as well have been written in Greek. The public could 
understand the spectacle, or special scenes and parts 
of a play, but the metaphysical and philosophical 
language, which forms a large part of nearly all the 
plays, was incomprehensible, and doubtless was omitted 
in the performance. After the Restoration, nearly ev- 
ery playwright took in hand one or more Shakespeare 
plays to re-write, re-model, and improve it. In some 
cases two of the plays were made into one. Dr. Doran 
says that it seemed to be the idea of these men that it 
was necessary to reduce Shakespeare to the mental level 
of the play-goers. If that were the case in the last 
part of the 17th century, how unappreciated must 
these plays have been in the last half of the i6th cen- 
tury when the "people were gross and dark," 
"but just emerging from barbarism", as Dr. Johnson 
declares — how little understood. Therefore, the as- 
sertion is thoughtless that the plays were written for 
the entertainment of the audiences at the theaters of 
Elizabeth's day. The author of these plays had in 
mind the public of a future, and much more enlight- 
ened, age. 

What does Jonson when ordered to compose verses 
laudatory of player Shaksper, and at the same time 
of plays which for years he had been sneering at and 
ridiculing? At last he has a chance to pay off old 
scores with the usurer- player, the rich charlatan, the 
poet-ape, who was now to masquerade as the author 
of these plays. So he begins: 



334 SHAESPB^R NO'T shakkspejar:^. 

", . . Soul of the Age 
The applause, delight and wonder of our stage, 
My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by 
Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie 
A little further to make thee a room. ' ' 

Of this Ingleby says: "I will not lodge thee", etc., 
means that he will not class Shakespeare with Chaucer, 
and the rest because he is out of all proportio7i greater 
than theyy This was a monstrous exaggeration, and 
could only have been spoken in irony, considering the 
estimation in which the Shakespeare plays had been 
held up to that time and the general ignorance among 
cultivated men respecting them. We know positively, 
through the labors of Phillipps and Ingleb)^, that this 
ignorance was general. If no one wrote of the plays, 
it was because nobody spoke of them. So far they 
had acquired no reputation at all. 

Even after the publication of the Folio, they were 
not popular, and found few readers. Dr. Johnson 
(Irife of Milton) says: "To prove the paucity of 
readers, it may be sufl&cient to remark that the nation 
had been satisfied from 1623 to 1664, that is, forty- 
one years, with only two editions of Shakespeare, 
which probably did not together make one thousand 
copies." Probably not more than one-half of a thou- 
sand, for "George Steevens estimates that the (first) 
edition numbered 250 copies". Lee, 305. 

It is a surprising fact, Ingleby being witness, that 
there is not one word of praise of the works of Shake- 
speare, plays or poems, between 1592 and 1623, by any 
dramatist or poet of the first or second rank. Noth- 
ing from such men but an occasional allusion to a play 



^HE FIRST FOI.IO. 335 

or poem, often distant. Not one word in commenda- 
tion of author or works. Whatever in Ingleby's 
Centurie of Prayse is really praise was written by men 
of no mark whatever, usually of the Weever and 
Digges stamp. Such men were not qualified to judge 
of the works of Shakespeare, or of appreciating them 
in the slightest degree, and the}^ were as likely to at- 
tribute their production to a player at the Curtain as 
to anyone else. As Mr. T.W.White says: "Why 
have we nothing from Thomas Kyd, George Peele, 
Thomas I^odge, George Chapman, Samuel Daniel, Ben 
Jonson, Michael Drayton, Christopher Marlowe, 
Thomas Dekker, John Marston, John Fletcher, Fran- 
cis Beaumont. John Middleton, or Philip Massinger? 
They were all contemporaries, poets and dramatists' ' . 
148. 

Kven Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, published 
1 62 1, while it quotes Spenser, Sidney and other poets 
of that age, never mentions Shakespeare. Evidently, 
Halliwell-Phillipps' "bard of our admiration" or 
"great dramatist", had not revealed himself to the 
other great writers of that generation. Dr. Ingleby 
expresses surprise that not only among the poets and 
dramatists above named, but such writers, or "great 
names", as I^ord Brooke, lyord Bacon, Selden, Sir 
John Beaumont, Henry Vaughan, and Lord Claren- 
don, no pains of research could connect the most 
trivial allusion to the Bard or his works; and he 
quotes approvingly Gerald Massey's remarks that 
"Shakespeare's contemporaries had no adequate con- 
ception of what manner of man or majesty of mind 



336 shaksp:^r not shakkspeare;. 

were amongst them. We know him better than they 
did." 

It was this very Folio which Jonson was so care- 
lessly prefacing that was to create and maintain a 
reputation for the Shakespeare plays that should fill 
the whole earth — but not in Jonson's day, or for two 
hundred years after. Up to 1623, no man could have 
known there were Shakespeare plays except through 
the Quarto copies of single plays stigmatized in a 
lump by the ostensible editors of the Folio, as stolen 
and surreptitious, and but twelve of the great plays 
had borne the name of William Shakespeare. Several 
of the greatest plays of the series were to appear in 
this Folio for the first time. 

Therefore Jonson' s praises of the plays were pur- 
posely beyond all reason, ironical. The next lines 
touch up the player: 

"For though thou hast small I,atin and less Greek 
From thence to honor thee I would not seek 
For names; but call forth thundering Aeschylus, 
Euripides and Sophocles to us, 
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, 
To life again to hear thy buskin tread 
And shake a stage; or when thy socks were on, 
Leave thee alone for the comparison 
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome 
Sent forth or since did from their ashes come. 
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show 
To whom all scenes of Furope homage owe." 

We have before seen that "small Latin" at that day 
meant a lack of any education at all, and this was 
doubtless what Jonson intended to signify. As to his 
rank as a player, we have also seen that William 



Th:^ first FOI.IO. 337 

Shaksper was a very inferior one. He was scarcely 
mentioned by contemporaries at all, and when he was, 
it was in connection with no histrionic power. He 
was one of the clowns, a pupil of Kempe, and what 
sort of man Kempe was, Dr. Rolfe's picture shows us. 
Therefore, to talk about bringing Pacuvius, Accius, 
and Seneca to life again, to hear this player's buskin 
tread, and shake a stage, "or when thy socks are on" 
— that is, when you are jigging it on boards and 
barrel-heads, or playing at the Curtain or the Globe — ■ 
nothing that Greece or Rome, or later ages, have pro- 
duced can hold a candle to you; that Britain may 
triumph, for now she has an actor to whom all Europe 
confesses homage — to talk in this way is not laudatory, 
or friendly, but abusive, defamatory, scurrilous. 

Remember Jonson was apostrophizing a man who 
had got rich and gave himself airs (coat-armour, etc.) 
by running a public theater, the lowest place of enter- 
tainment, a center of organized vice, who belonged to 
a despised occupation, whom no one confessed to hav- 
ing known, but who was set up as the writer of these 
plays. 

Suppose that Jones, of Allegheny, had just delivered 
a speech in the New York Assembly, when up jumps 
Rogers, of Cattaraugus, and apostrophizes Jones as the 
Soul of the Age, the applause, delight and wonder of 
all creation, far ahead of Clay, Webster, Everett, not 
to say Demosthenes or Cicero, and calls on America to 
triumph, for she has one now to show to whom all 
Christendom owes homage. I am inclined to think 
there would be a fight in two minutes, and that Jones 



33^ shakspe;r not' shaki^speIar:^. 

would be justified in tackling Rogers for deriding and 
lampooning him. 

Then Jonson turns to the surviving author, and 
hints that this sweet Swan may show itself again: 

"What a sight it were, 
To see thee in our waters yet appear, 
And make those flights upon the bank of Thames, 
That did so take Eliza and our James. ' ' 

He closes, by calling on him, if he means to do it at 
all, to be quick, for "since thy flight" (thy disappear- 
ance, thy seclusion, the cessation of the plays) "the 
drooping stage has mourned like night" — because it 
cannot get a new supply of plays. So "Shine forth, 
thou Star of Poets, ' ' give us some more new plays, 
pray. 

And see the man chuckle as he writes at the tail of 
his verse under the cut, the notice to the reader, that 
since he cannot expect him to discover the wit of 
which he has been talking in that stolid figure-head, 
"Why reader, look not at the Picture, but his Book". 

It has been suggested that Jonson had recently, 
(since his conversation with Drummond, 1619,) 
learned the secret of these plays, but was loyal to the 
interest of the author, or one of them, still living in 
1623, and he entreats him to cheer again the drooping 
stage. "What a sight it were to see thee in our waters 
yet appear. ' ' Donnelly well says, p. 96 : ' 'How comes it 
that Jonson expresses the hope that the author would 
reappear, and write new plays, and cheer the drooping 
stage, and shine forth again, if he referred to the man 



'The; i^irsi" foIvIO. 339 

whose moldering relics had been lying in the Strat- 
ford church for seven years ?' ' 

We have seen that the Shakespeare plays were not 
written for the rabble who crowded the narrow limits 
of the Curtain and Globe, ' 'illiterate, who could not 
for the most part read and write"; but also that they 
were not understood even by the better class of 
people. The earliest real appreciation came in the 
first third of the 19th century. For Jonson to pretend 
to go into exstacies over the plays, and over player 
Shaksper, lauding him as one of whom Britain was 
proud, was all of a piece, and can only be explained by 
his intention to deride the man and the pretensions set 
up for him. 

All the early commentators took the ground that Jon- 
feon was envious of the player, whom they, the com- 
mentators, held to have been Shakespeare, the author, 
and embraced every opportunity to sneer at and de- 
preciate him. Thus Steevens says: "The whole of 
Jonson' s Prologue to Every Man in his Humour is a 
malicious sneer at Shakspere". Malone talks about 
the baseness and malignity of Jonson's conduct towards 
Shakspere. Gifford, I^ife of Jonson, says: "Mr. 
Malone quotes the passage in more than one place to 
evince the malignity of Jonson," 

Reed says: "Jonson's insincerity was for two hun- 
dred years a matter of universal comment among 
scholars; Dryden, Malone, Steevens, Chalmers, and 
others, had no doubt on the subject." And scholars 
would be of the same mind to-day, had not the recent 
appreciation of these plays reduced Jonson's panegyric 
within 'bounds. Two things happened which Jonson 



340 shaksp:^r noi" shaki^spbare;. 

did not foresee. The first, that the genesis of the 
myth that Shaksper was the author of the Poems and 
Plays was right there, in those verses; the second, 
that — and it would have astonished Jonson not a 
little — in the lapse of the centuries, his praises, which 
in 1623, if understood literally, were extravagant and 
ridiculous, would come to be regarded as within the 
truth — that the reputation of these plays should have 
far outgrown that of any and all the works of other 
poets and dramatists of Elizabeth's day. The verses 
that in 1623, if soberly written, were lies, to-day are 
truths. Jonson had said in his epigram on Poet- Ape, 
by whom some authors understand manager Shaksper: 

The sluggish gaping auditor . . . 

. . . marks not whose twas first; and aftertimes 

May judge it to be his. ' 

Fool! as if half eyes will not know a fleece 

From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece. 

The half eyes for three hundred years have taken 
the locks of wool for the whole fleece, led uninten- 
tionally to do so by Jonson himself. 

As we have seen, Mr. Fleay, while not denouncing 
Jonson' s affectations as malicious, tells us, that in his 
opinion, no value is to be attributed to them, that is, 
that Jonson was insincere. 

In 1 6 19, three years after Shaksper 's death, and four 
years before the eulogistic verses appeared in the Folio, 
Jonson visited William Drummond of Hawthornden, 
another poet, and Drummond entered in his note-book 
Jonson' s remarks on the poets and play-wrights of his 
time. So much as relates to Shakespeare is given by 



THE FIRST FOLIO. 34I 

Ingleby, p. 129:) "His censure (opinion) of the Eng- 
lish Poets was this . . . that Shakespeer wanted 
art." "Sheakspear in a play brought in a number of 
men saying they had suffered ship-wreck in Bohemia, 
wher yr is no sea neer by some 100 miles". 
In the verses of the FoHo, Jonson says: 

"Yet must I not give nature all; thy Art, 
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part; 
For though the Poet's matter Nature be 
His Art doth give the fashion ; and that he 
Who casts to write a living line must sweat 
(Such as thine are) and strike the second beat 
Upon the Muse's anvil; turn the same 
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame. 
Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn. 
For a good poet 's made, as well as born. 
And such wert thou! Look how the father's face 
Lives in his issue, even so the race 
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines 
In his well-turned and true-filed lines. ' ' 

In 16 19, Jonson told Drummond that Shakespeare 
wanted art; in 1623, he says Shakespeare has art — 
plenty of it;* he is a poet and made so by labor; he had 
had to sweat for it, to write and re- write, "strike the 
second heat upon the anvil". "You are by nature a 
poet, but a good poet is made as well as born' ' . (And 
such wert thou; witness thy well-turned and true- 
filed lines)." 

There is every reason to believe that Jonson ex- 
pressed to Drummond, in 1619, his then candid opin- 
ion of the plays of Shakespeare. By 1623, he had 

*I have before quoted John Taylor's line: "Spenser and 
Shakespeare did in art excel." 



342 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKE^SPEARiE. 

apparently experienced an entire change of heart, and 
in the prefatory verses gave a directly opposite opinion. 
But, as addressed to Shaksper, the player, on the the- 
ory that he was the Shakespeare, every line is not 
merely inapplicable, but absurd. Not one of the 
Shaksperolaters believes that the "bard of his admi- 
ration" labored over the plays; on the contrary, most 
of them hold with Phillipps that this man alone of all 
mortals since the days of the Hebrew prophets wrote 
under immediate inspiration, not by design — that in 
the odd half-hours snatched from his theatrical duties, 
without study, and without books, he dashed off com- 
pleted plays, Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet, etc., moved by 
some beneficent and divine influence that was thus 
kindly helping him to fill the pit and galleries of his 
theater with the stinkards and prostitutes of London. 
The remaining fraction will say that Shaksper had 
picked up somewhere a little smattering of knowl- 
edge, and of languages, and that all shortcomings, 
such as the sea-coast of Bohemia, were owing 
to his defective early advantages. One individual, 
Lecturer "Wendell, of Harvard, has put it on rec- 
ord that these plays are not so extraordinary as 
people have thought, and intimates that he knows of 
a man, who, given a few Elizabethan books, and Coke 
upon Littleton, could compose plays after the manner 
of Shakespeare that would surprise himself, a fact 
which I doubt not at all.* But plainly these words of 



* Professor Wendell, testing his theory, has published a 
Shaksperesque play, called Ralegh in Guiana, in Scribner's 
Magazine, June, '97, from which I cull a few gems. And I 
take the opportunity to say that his mentions of Mary Fitton 



the; first FOI.IO. 343 

Jonson are totally unsuited to the Stratford man, on 
any theory whatever. The laudatory contribution is 
indivisible, and the votaries of the man Shakespeare 
cannot be allowed to appropriate what they like, and 
ignore the rest; cannot toss up their caps at the men- 
are execrable, baseless, and libelous. If that lady has any de- 
scendants in Harvard, they should take it out with Professor 
Wendell on the campus: 

"Then beware sir, how you loose 
Your tongue. My hair in youth was red; 
And though sea-salt encrust it now with gray 
The head beneath stays hot. ' ' 

' 'The cloudy monster, circumstance, 
Affrighting common folk, doth melt to air 
. Round them that, plunging in her maw, dare vex 
Her misty bowels. ' ' 

"Lusty Ben — 
You know him?" 

' 'He that makes the plays, 
I^aid bricks once, slew a player, and drinks deep?" 
' 'The same, he was my tutor. Once I plied him 
Till he was e'en past snoring. Then, his heels 
Together, I bade them lay him in a cart 
And carry him abroad through Paris streets, 
A livelier image of a crucifix 
Than any carved in France." 

"Keep the peace 
Till then; and send me for a challenger 
Some stale companion of thy lady wife — 
Her that the player wrote his sonnets for 
And Pembroke fooled with." 

' 'This is worse than what in other yeare 
I thought my worst — when Mary Fitton, sir. 
Who was my wife at last — played me false 
With one Will Shakspere — a common player 
That made plays, otherwise noteless," 



344 SHAKSPKR NOT shakeispeiar:^. 

tion of the Sweet Swan of Avon, and smother the 
testimony of Jonson that the Shakespeare he has in 
mind, and is talking of, took infinite pains in shaping 
and polishing his verses. Further, that Shakespeare's 
mind and manners live in his verses as the face of a 
father in his sons' face; that is, the verses show them- 
selves to be the work of an educated man and gentle- 
man, which Jonson could not possibly have said of any 
work of William Shaksper, for the sufl&cient reason 
that he was neither an educated man, nor a gentle- 
man. 

It is certain that Jonson did not regard Shakespeare 
as a great poet, or as exceling or equaling Chaucer, 
Spenser, and others, although he pronounced him to 
be a good poet; and we know this from Jonson him- 
self. He died in 1637, fifteen years after the issue of 
the Folio. In 1641, there was published his work 
entitled "Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and 
Matter as they have flowed out of his daily Readings, 
or had their reflex to his peculiar Notion of the 
Times." The subject-matter is in paragraphs, each 
under its own heading, and was jotted down from 
time to time during the last years of his life. It fills 
twenty-five large, fine-printed pages in Moxon's edi- 
tion of Jonson' s Works. On the fifth page, under the 
head of Memoria, the author speaks of himself as hav- 
ing passed forty, when his memory began to fail him, 
and as now "being shaken with age", so that his 
memory "cannot promise much". As Jonson was bom 
in 1574, past forty would be 16 14, and to be shaken 
with age, past another ten years at least. On the 
eighth page, he speaks of Francis Bacon, Dominus 



THS MRST FOI.IO. 345 

Verulamius, as one who had Hved. Bacon died in 
1626. From these dates, it is evident that nearly, if 
not quite, all of these Discoveries were written after 
the death of Shaksper, and after the issue of the 
Folio. 

On page 8, just after the paragraph on Bacon in the 
Scriptorum Catalogus, in which he enumerates by name 
many wits of that and the preceding age "that could 
honor a language or help study", and among them 
Bacon, who had filled all numbers, "and performed 
that in our tongue which may be compared or pre- 
ferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome' ' ; 
(thus repeating the words he had used respecting 
"Shakespeare" in the Folio), he closes the section 
by saying that "Bacon may be named, and stand as the 
mark and the acme of our language. ' ' As acme means 
the highest point, the pinnacle, he here puts Bacon, 
who had filled all numbers, above every other author 
in the language. He has now no thought of ' 'Shakes- 
peare", whom he had, in 1623, apostrophized as the 
Soul of the Age, the Star of Poets, the man not for 
an age, but for all time; whose writings could not be 
praised too much; a monument without a tomb; as 
out of all proportion greater than the hitherto greatest 
of English poets. And now, in the Catalogue of 
Writers, he has forgotten that such a name existed in 
English lyiterature. 

Again, some years later, under the head of Prae- 
cipiendi modi (17th page), on the instruction of youth, 
we find this: "Therefore youth ought to be instructed 
betimes and in the best things. . . . And as it is 
fit to read the best authors to youth first, so let them 



346 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKESPEJAR^. 

be of the openest and clearest;" and lie goes on to 
mention sucli authors as would serve this purpose, 
Sidney and Donne, Gower and Chaucer, but again for- 
gets all about Shakespeare. 

Plainly enough, notwithstanding the praises heaped 
upon the author of the Shakespeare plays in the Folio 
verses, as well as upon the plays themselves, Jonson 
did not really hold Shakespeare to be one of the fore- 
most poets, and the praises were simply ironical. As 
we have seen. Dr. Ingleby, in his Preface, speaks of 
Jonson' s omitting to mention Shakespeare, as above, as 
something remarkable. There is but one explanation 
of the fact possible. 

At an early date in the Discoveries, 7th page, or two 
pages after the Memoria, which as we have seen, must 
have been written after 1623, we have De Shakespeare 
Nostrat, which undoubtedly means player Shaksper. 
He says he had heard from the players, (all illiterate 
men, be it remembered) that Shakespeare had written 
something, he knows not what, "whatsoever he 
penned' ' , with such facility that ' 'he never blotted out 
a line;" meaning there were no erasures, or alterations 
in the manuscript. His answer was that from what he 
knew of the man, he ought to have blotted out a 
thousand lines, for he was naturallj^ so garrulous and 
blunderheaded, that it could not have been otherwise. 
Following the text, the words are these: 

"I remember the players have often mentioned it as 
an honor to Shakespeare that in his writing (whatso- 
ever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My 
answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand. 
"Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not 



the; first folio. 347 

told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who chose 
that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein 
he most faulted; and to justify mine own candor; for I 
loved the man and do honor his memory, on this side 
idolatry, as much as any. He was indeed honest, and 
of an open and free nature, had an excellent phantasy; 
wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it 
was necessary he should be stopped. Sufflami7iandus erat, 
as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his 
own power, would the rule of it had been so too. 
Many times he fell into those things could not escape 
laughter; as when he said in the person of Caesar, 
one speaking to him: 'Caesar thou dost me wrong', he 
replied, 'Caesar did never wrong but with just cause', 
and such like; which were ridiculous." * 

* This play was first published in the Folio, and Act III, 1., 7, 

reads: 

"Know Caesar doth not wrong, faor without cause, 
. . . Will he be satisfied?" 
Probably player Shaksper, in spouting his part in a Caesar 
play, had made the blunder Jonson speaks of. H.-P. II, 257, 
tells us that Caesar was a favorite subject for dramatic repre- 
sentation from 1579 onward. There were ntunerous Caesar 
plays by as many authors, and, as in so many other cases, these 
would be utilized in the preparation of the Shakespeare Julius 
Caesar. Several of them were based on North's translation of 
Plutarch's L,ife of Caesar, and naturally they would have had 
resemblances — indeed identical expressions. Whether the Shake- 
speare play had ever been seen on the stage before its publica- 
tion in 1623 or not, is altogether uncertain. There is no direct 
evidence in its favor. Some commentators guess from the 
paucity of light-endings and weak endings' ' — all twaddle — that 
it was composed about 1601. But so far as Ingleby's references 
show, any Caesar performed before the issue of the Folio must 
have been one of the old plays mentioned. 



348 SHAKSPKR NOT shak:^spe;ar:s. 

(Could Jonson have used such language respecting 
the real Shakespeare, the author of Hamlet ?) 

In other words, Shaksper talked too much, and by 
his blunders and chattering made himself a laughing- 
stock. "Why Johnson, while depreciating player 
Shaksper in one sentence, should have said in the 
next that nevertheless he almost idolized the man, and 
loved him, and honored his memorj^, is not apparent, 
unless it is to be explained on the ground that Jonson 
dearly loved to satirize his quondam friend, but recent 
enemy, and took care that his praise should be balanced 
by his criticisms. 

Drummond, in his note-book, entered this character 
of Ben Jonson: "He is a great lover and praiser of 
himself; a contemner and scorner of others; given 
rather to lose a friend than a jest; jealous of every 
word and action of those about him, especially after 
drink, which is one of the elements in which he 
liveth," etc. Chamber's Knc, Kng. lyit., Jonson. 

If Jonson goes, who remains, and what becomes of 
the Shaksper myth? It had its beginning with 
Jonson, and for nearly three hundred years has had 
no support whatever outside Jonson' s verses. The 
apex of the inverted Shaksper pyramid rests on that 
little bit of contradictory testimony. 

The suggestion that the Shaksper story may be 
mythical, that the well-known facts of Shaksper' s life 
made it out of the question that he could have written 
the Shakespeare plays — the one answer has been that 
Jonson expressly said that Shakespeare, by whom of 
course he meant our beloved Swan of Avon, was the 
Soul of the Age, the Star of Poets. Point out that 



i*he; first foIvIO. 349 

Jonson, at other times and places, expressed himself 
in terms incompatible with the sentiment of the 
verses, and by omitting the author of these plays 
from a list of good poets, or by refusing to recommend 
his works as worth study, showed that he had but 
a slight opinion of plays or works; and hence it is 
clear that his praises in the Folio were not honest; — 
the reply is: "But he said that Shakespeare's writings 
were such that neither man nor Muse could praise too 
much, and that he soared far above Chaucer or Spenser, 
and that all the world was saymg so. Which very 
words, in view of the fact that up to 1623 nobody 
whatever had said so, and that the world neither knew 
nor cared about these plays, are enough to make it im- 
possible that the verses could have been written other- 
wise than in joke. Jonson never dreamed that such 
hyperbolical language could be taken seriously. 

A clipping from a recent newspaper is instructive in 
this matter. It is headed "Mar5'''s letter from Cali- 
fornia' ' : 

"Why, she says the red-wood trees are so tall that 
it requires two people to see the top. It does not 
seem possible — and strawberries as big as pineapples. 
Who ever heard the like ?" 

"Don't you see, grandma, that Mary is only chaff- 
ing ? She purposely makes stories so big that no one 
will believe them. It is just a satire on the boastful 
claims made for that country." 



350 shakspe;r not shak:^spe;arb;. 

CHAPTER XII. 

HBMINGB AND CONDBlvL. 

Heminge and Condell (Ing. 143-45), fellow-players 
of Shaksper, are the ostensible editors of the First 
Folio of the collected plays, 1623, and the apparent 
authors of the Dedication and Prefatory Address. 
The Dedication is to the Barls of Pembroke and Mont- 
gomery, and in part runs thus: 

"When we value the places your H.H. sustain, we 
cannot but know their dignity greater than to descend 
to the readings of these trifles. But since your I^.L. 
have been pleased to think these trifles something, 
heretofore", etc., etc. — in short, we venture to pub- 
lish them. 

In the Address: "It had been a thing, we confess, 
worthy to have been wished, that the Author himself 
had lived to set forth, and overseen his own writings; 
but since it hath been ordained, a7id he by death de- 
parted from that right, we pray you do not envy his 
Friends the ofiice of their care and pain to have col- 
lected them; and so to have published them, as wher^e 
{before') you were abused with divers stolen and surrep- 
titious copies, and deformed by the frauds and stealths of 
injurious impostors that exposed thejn'" (that is, "ex 
posed them for sale, or published them", Craik); 
''even those are now offered to your view cured and per- 
fect of their limbs, as he conceived them. . . . His 
mind and hand went together; and what he thought, 



HEMINGK AND CONDKl.Iv. 351 

he Uttered with, that easiness that we have scarce re- 
ceived from him a blot in his papers," etc., etc. 

This statement, if Heminge and Condell really made 
it, would show that they were totally ignorant of the 
ways of authors. No manuscript of any length was 
ever written wdthout corrections, excisions, additions, 
erasures, and emendations, and to claim that here was 
a man who wrote a vast mass of manuscript with 
scarce a blot, is so contrary to what the fact must 
have been, that evidently it was not expected to be 
believed. It is ridicule of Shaksper' s claim of author- 
ship of the same nature as that which runs through 
Jonson's mocking verses. Indeed it is probable that 
Jonson wrote both Dedication and Address, as Malone 
suggests, and as many Shakespeare critics have be- 
lieved. 

The Address distinctly states that Shaksper, at his 
death, still owned these plays; that his friends, Hem- 
inge and Condell, were at the pains to have collected 
the plays and published them (implying oversight); 
that the previous copies (the Quartos) were stolen and 
surreptitious, deformed by the frauds of the impostors 
who had published them; and that the Folio copies 
now offered were received from Shaksper himself, and 
were cured and perfect of limb, just as the author con- 
ceived them. 

Craik says, "English of Shakespeare": "Here we 
have, along with an emphatic and undiscriminating 
condemnation of all the preceding impressions, a dis- 
tinct declaration by the publishers of the present vol- 
ume (H. & C.) that they had the use of the author's 
manuscripts". 



352 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPBJAR:^. 

Reed says: "The ostensible editors were two play- 
wrights, formerly connected with the company of 
which William Shakspere was a member. Heminge 
appears also to have been a grocer. In the dedication, 
they characterize the Plays, with singular infelicity, as 
'trifles'. They astonish us still more by the use they 
make of Pliny's Epistle to Vespasian, prefixed to his 
Natural History, and not translated into English till 
1635. Not only are the thoughts of the I^atin author 
most happily introduced, but they are amplified and 
fitted to the purpose with consummate literary skill." 

Dr. Ingleby, note, 144, says: "The first part of the 
peroration of this address is so good as to evoke the 
suspicion that it is not original. ... In truth 
the beginning of the peroration is literally translated 
from Pliny's dedicatory epistle to Vespasian, prefixed 
to his Natural History, which ran thus: 'Country 
people and many nations offer milk to their gods; and 
-they who have not incense obtain their requests with 
only meal and salt; nor was it imputed to any as a 
fault to worship the gods in whatever way they 
could'." 

The Address says: "Country hands reach forth 
milk, cream, fruits, or what they have; and many 
Nations (we have heard) that had not gums and in- 
cense obtained their requests with a leavened cake. 
It was no fault to approach their gods by what means 
they could; and the most, though meanest of things, 
are made more precious when they are dedicated to 
Temples. In that name, therefore, we most humbly 
consecrate to your highnesses these remains of your 
servant Shakespeare, " etc. 



HEJMINGH AND CONDEII,!,. 353 

Ingleby further says: "The writer of the Address 
of 1623 added 'cream and fruits' in one place and 
'gums' in another; and for mola salsa appears to 
have, not unskillfully, caught up Horace's 'farj^e 
pio\ (Odes, III, 23, 11, 17-20.) He adds, too, very 
gracefully, that 'the meanest things are made more 
precious when they are dedicated to temples'." As 
I have quoted from Mr. Reed, the thoughts of Pliny 
are not only happily introduced, but they are amplified 
and fitted to the purpose with consummate skill. 

Malone suggests that both Dedication and Address 
were written by Ben Jonson. Craik thinks that either 
Jonson "or another — some regular author of the day" 
— ^were got to write them. Bishop Wordsworth speaks 
of the Address as "supposed to have been written by 
Ben Jonson' ' . Why Ben Jonson ? Because it is not 
to be believed that men of the occupation and sur- 
roundings of Heminge and Condell could have written 
this learned and ingenious Dedication and Preface. 
Yet it is not one thousandth part so wonderful that 
the two strolling players should have composed these 
papers as that their fellow, William Shaksper, should 
have written any one of the Shakespeare plays. If 
occupation and surroundings are against Heminge 
and Condell, much more are the same against Shak- 
sper. 

As to these plays in the Folio being perfect, and as 
the author conceived them, whereas the Quarto copies 
were deformed by frauds, and imperfect, published by 
impostors — B. Disraeli, in the Amenities of Authors, 
says: "Heminge and Condell profess that they have 
done this oflB.ce to the dead only to keep the memory 



354 SHAKSPKR NOT shakksp:^are;. 

of so worthy a friend alive as was our Shakespeare. 
Yet their utter negligence shown in their fellow's 
volume is no evidence of their pious friendship, nor 
perhaps of their care or their intelligence." 

None of the family of Shaksper had any connection 
with the publishing of the First Folio, of 1623, (or any 
subsequent Folio), nor had his executors. On the 
title page it is said: "Printed by Isaac Jaggard and 
Bd. Blount, 1623." At the back of the book 
— "Printed at the charges of W. Jaggard, Bd. 
Blount, I. Smithweeke and W. Aspley, 1623". This 
Jaggard is the man who, in 1599, had published a work 
called the Passionate Pilgrim, made up of two sonnets 
of "Shakespeare" and a few verses from lyove's la- 
bour's lyost, with a good deal more from other authors, 
the whole attributed to William Shakespeare.* 

H.-P., I, 179, says of this book: "The entire pub- 
lication bears evident marks of an attempted fraud." 
Other editors speak of Jaggard as ' 'the piratical pub- 
lisher." Well, he was the proper man to be connected 
with the fraud now about to be perpetrated in this 
Folio. The volume was got out by an association of 
printers, Jaggard being a specimen brick, and they 
employed some other than the illiterate fellow-players 
of Shaksper to write Dedication and Preface. 

•:■;• ii^g ^jjg publisher of 'The Passionate Pilgrim', Jaggard 
seems to have learnt for the first time that Shakespeare was 
what he would doubtless have called a selling name. He was 
consequently quite ready to embark substantial capital in a 
very large venture of a complete collection of his plays. These 
five traders — all of whom ignored and defied on principle the 
interests of contemporary authors — were readily responsible for 
the great First Folio, ' ' Sidney I^ee, Cornhill, April, 1S99, p. 450. 



HKMINGE) AND CONDKLI.. 355 

Dr. Morgan, 107-9: "Whatever literary property- 
then existed at common law was in the shape of a 
license to reprint a work under the permission of the 
Stationer's Company.^ Once in their hands, printers 
did what they pleased with a manuscript; abridged it, 
lengthened it, altered it. They assigned the authorship 
to any name they thoitght would help sell the book, and 
dedicated it to whom they pleased. ' ' Thus it happened, 
that a name on a title page was not evidence that the 
individual so named was the author of the printed 
book. 

In the present case, the name of William Shake- 
speare, ' 'our fellow' ' , on the title page, goes in no way 
as proof that our fellow (whose name was not Shake- 
speare) wrote these plays, or had any connection with 
them; and the names of Heminge and Condell are no 
evidence that they were the real editors, or the authors 
of the Dedication or Address. Between 1595 and 1609, 
anybody was free to use the name of William Shake- 
speare. No play is entered at the Stationer's Register 
under this name, or of Shaksper, or Shakspere. In 
every case the entry is for the printer. (See Fleay, 
Appendix, I^ife, where all the plays entered at the 

* In 1556, Philip and Mary had erected 97 booksellers into a 
body called "The Stationer's Company", who were to monopo- 
lize the printing of books, if they chose. They had given them 
power and authority to print such books as they obtained, either 
from author's manuscript or translations, and to see very care- 
fully that nobody else printed them. Their power was absolute, 
and they were empowered ... to suppress any printed 
matter they did not choose to license, wherever they pleased", 
etc. 



356 shakspi;r not shakespejare. 

Stationer's Register between 1584 and 1640 are 
given. ) 

The note in Ingleby upon the assertion that the 
editors printed from the author's manuscript, reads: 
"If by this they intended to convey to the reader the 
notion that the text of the Foho of 1623 was printed 
from the author's own manuscript, they must stand 
convicted of a suggestio falsi; for five at least of the 
plays included in that volume are little more than the 
reprint of the previous quarto editions, characterized 
by them as 'surreptitious copies,' " etc. 

In his Essays, 1888, Dr. Ingleby again saj'-s: "I 
suppose I must cite the ostensible editors of the first 
collection of Shakespeare's work . . . but un- 
fortunately for their credit and our own satisfaction, 
their prefatory statement contains, or at least suggests, 
what they must have known to be false. ' ' 

Dowden says, 233: "In their address to the readers, 
they profess to give for the first time the true text, 
and it is implied that they printed from Shakespeare's 
manuscripts. As a fact, the text abounds with er- 
rors, and in many instances they evidently print from 
the Quartos. ' ' 

The address distinctly states that William Shak- 
sper, at his death, still owned these plays; that his 
friends, Heminge and Condell, were at the care and 
pains to have collected and published them (implying 
oversight, supervision) ; that the previous copies — the 
Quartos, newly "corrected, augmented and amended" 
■ — the second quarto of Romeo and Juliet; or the 2nd 
quarto of Hamlet, which Fleay says is much superior 
to the Hamlet of the First Folio, and is in the shape 



HKMlNGBi AND dONDEjtt. ^S7 

fittest for private reading — as well as all the rest, 
were stolen and surreptitious, deformed by tlie frauds 
of tlie impostors who had published them — a declara- 
tion that Shaksper had no interest in, or connection 
with, the Quartos; and that the Folio copies now of- 
fered were received from William Shaksper himself, 
and are cured and perfect in all respects, just as he 
conceived them. 

The commentators, one and all, either make light of 
these statements, or say in effect that no one is ex- 
pected to believe them. Craik says: "What they 
say is nothing more than the sort of recommendation 
with which it was customary for enlarged and improved 
editions to be introduced to the world. ... Of 
correction for the press, there is not one word. ' ' He 
further says: "It is not likely that the two players, 
who, with the exception of this Dedication and 
Preface, to which their names are attached, are quite 
unknown in connection with literature, were at all 
qualified for such a function. . . . There is prob- 
ably not a page in it (the Folio) which is not dis- 
figured by many minute inaccuracies and irregularities. 
The most elementary proprieties of the metrical ar- 
rangement are violated in innumerable passages. In 
some places the verse is printed as plain prose; else- 
where, prose is ignorantly and ludicrously exhibited 
in the guise of verse. . . . Everything betokens 
that editor or editing of the volume, in any proper or 
distinctive sense, there could have been none. In one 
instance (Much Ado), we have actually the names of 
the actors by whom the play was performed prefixed 



35^ SHAKSPi^R NOl" SHAltESPE^AR:^. 

to their portions of the dialogue instead of those of 
the dramatis personae,'" etc. 

Mr. Knight observes that ' 'it shows very clearly the 
text of the play (Much Ado) to have been taken from 
the prompter' s book. But the fact is, the scene in ques- 
tion is given in the same way in the previous Quarto 
edition of the play, published in 1600, so that here the 
printers had evidently no manuscript of any kind in 
their hands, any more than had anyone over them to 
prevent them from blindly following their printed copy 
into the most transparent absurdities. ... In ad- 
dition to a large number of doubtful or disputed pas- 
sages, there are many readings in it (Folio) which are 
either absolutely unintelligible and therefore corrupt, 
or, although not purely nonsensical, yet clearly wrong, 
and at the same time such as are hardly to be suffi- 
ciently accounted for as to natural mistakes of the 
compositor. . . . Such errors and deficiencies can 
only be explained on the supposition that the com- 
positor had been left to depend upon a manuscript 
which was imperfect, or which could not be read." 

"Some of the finest thoughts and expressions are 
found in the quarto editions, and not in the Folio. 
For instance, in the play of Hamlet, nearly all of Sc. 
IV, Act 4, is found in the Quarto and not in the 
Folio. . . . Hundreds of other admirable sen- 
tences can be quoted which appear in the Quarto, but 
not in the Folio. ... In some respects the stolen 
and surreptitious copies of the Quarto are more correct 
than the Folio, and but for the Quarto we would have 
lost some of the finest gems of thought and expres- 



HKMINGK AND CONDB^Ll,. 359 

sion whicli go by the name of Shakespeare." Don- 
nelly, 90. 

Knight saj^s of lyear: "lyarge passages which are 
found in the Quarto are omitted in the Folio. 
These amount to as many as two hundred and twenty- 
five lines; and they comprise one entire scene, and one 
or two of the most striking connected passages in the 
drama." 

As I have shown elsewhere, many of these plays 
exist in several forms, brief, or more or less enlarged. 
Henry V, ist Ed., 1603, contains 1,800 lines; enlarged 
(Eolio, 1623), contains 3,500 lines. "In this elabora- 
tion the old materials are very carefully used up; but 
they are so thoroughly refitted and dovetailed with 
what is new, that the operation can only be compared 
to the work of a skillful architect, who, having an an- 
cient mansion to enlarge and beautify, with a strict 
regard to its original character, preserves every feature 
of the structure, under other combinations, with such 
marvelous skill, that no unity or principle is violated, 
and the whole has the effect of a restoration in which 
the new and old are undistinguishable" . Charles 
Knight; Pictorial Shakespeare, Histories, I, 310. 

Heminge and Condell are made to declare that the 
play of Henry V and the rest, were printed from the 
true and original manuscript, that they ''were absolute 
in their numbers as he conceived them; that what he 
thought, he uttered with that easiness, that they have 
scarce received from him a blot in his papers. ' ' From all 
which it appears that these ignorant players set up as the 
ostensible editors of the Folio, were made by the writer 
of the Dedication and Address, to lie repeatedly and 



360 shaksp:^r not shake;spi;are;. 

flagrantly, and their, or his, evidence as to the connec- 
tion of William Shaksper with these plays, is of no 
value whatever. And yet, notwithstanding the patent 
fact that these men' s names were put forth by a men- 
dacious writer of paid advertisements, and that there 
is not an iota of truth in any one of the statements 
they are made to utter, their testimony is regarded by 
the Shaksperolaters as second in value only to that of 
Jonson, in his verses prefixed to the same Folio. The 
world is called on to believe that player Shaksper wrote 
the plays on the sole testimony of Jonson, and of 
Heminge and Condell. What Jonson' s verses are worth, 
I have shown, and here are the others, self convicted 
liars. The whole squad of writers who introduced 
this Folio were of a class, apparently under a contract 
with the syndicate of publishers to chant the praises 
of the rich ex-manager. It suggests the paid effusions 
on the virtues of Pears soap or Payne's Celery Com- 
pound. 

One of these writers was Leonard Digges, said by 
Farmer to have been a wit of the town, and he dis- 
courses thus: — 

"Shakespeare at lengtli thy pious fellowes give 
The world thy Works; thy works by which outlive 
Thy Tombe, thy name must; when that stone is rent, 
And Time dissolves thy Stratford Moniment, 
Here we alive shall view thee still." 

The same Digges wrote later, in 1640, also as a prefix 
to another Shakespeare volume, this time the poems: — • 

"Next nature only helped him, for look through 
This whole book, thou shalt find he doth not borrow 



hi^minge; and conde;i.i:,. 361 

One phrase from Greeks, nor Ivatins imitate, 
Nor from the vulgar languages translate, 
Nor plagiari-like from others glean," etc. 

It is manifest that he had got beyond his depth, and 
was talking of a matter about which he knew noth- 
ing. The fact is, that the author or authors of the 
Shakespeare poems and plays laid all literature, an- 
cient and modern, under contribution, and borrowed 
and translated without end. Digges must have had 
but a superficial acquaintance with the plays, not ac- 
quired from reading them, or he would not have mixed 
up Twelfth Night and As You lyike It, as he did in 
these same verses. As he was born in 1588, he was 
in his youth when Shaksper left lyondon for Stratford. 

Forty years after Heminge and Condell's Preface 
appeared these words, cited by Shakspereans in favor 
of their William: — 

"Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben 
Johnson, which two I behold like a Spanish great gal- 
leon and an English man-of-war; Master Johnson, (like 
the former) was built far higher in learning, solid, but 
slow in his performances. Shakespear, with the Eng- 
lish man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, 
could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advan- 
tage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and 
invention." Fuller, Hist, of the Worthies of Eng- 
land, II, 114. This is often made to read, "I beheld", 
as something Fuller was a personal witness to. Fuller 
was but eight years old when Shaksper died, and but 
two, when the player-manager quitted I^ondon. But 
the word in Fuller is "behold", which Knight says 
means "with his mind's eye." Morgan says, "a fancy 



362 SHAKSP:eR NO^I^ SHAKKSPEJAREl. 

sketch of what Fuller thought likely to have oc- 
curred." 

As to the "Mermaid," Raleigh founded that Club, 
and he and other gentlemen wits were in the habit of 
meeting there. We read of Beaumont, Fletcher, Jon- 
son, Selden, Donne, Carew and others, but not of 
Shakespeare, nor Shaksper; nor is there any evidence 
of, or probability of, William Shaksper having had 
entrance to the Mermaid. His despised profession 
would have cut him off from that companionship. As 
well might a tumbler, or Savoyard bear-ward, seek ad- 
mission to the Manhattan Club. "No matter how 
cleanly the lives of players might be", says Dr. In- 
gleby, "they were regarded sa7is aveu as runaways 
and vagrants" ; and Phillipps says (I, 193) that they 
were then "regarded in about the same light with 
jugglers and buffoons." 

Beyond this there is nothing from that age to con- 
nect William Shaksper the player with Shakespeare 
the poet. The Shakespeare critics quote Milton as 
a witness for Shaksper. I have spoken of this in 
Chapter X. 

Milton was but seven years old when player Shak- 
sper died. His mention of the poet Shakespeare in 
connection with the tomb of the player merely shows 
that in his time, or after the publication of the Folio, 
the plays were beginning to be attributed to the 
Stratford man; not at all that they were written by 
him. Milton never saw one of these plays acted, or 
the inside of a I^ondon theater; all his knowledge of 
Shakespeare came from reading the Folio. Milton's 



H:^MINGE^ and CONDi^Lt. 363 

pretty verses, therefore, are evidence of nothing but 
his own imaginative faculty. 

I^ee, 327, makes much of the Hues by I. M. S., an 
unknown writer, contributed to the Second Folio of 
1632, and calls it a splendid eulogy. Ingleby con- 
jectures that the initial letters stand for In Memoriam 
Scriptoris. The opening lines declare Shakespeare's 
freehold to have been (Ing. 191): 

' 'A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear 
And equal surface can make things appear 
Distant a thousand years, and represent 
Them in their lively colours just extent." 

It was his faculty, 

' 'To outrun hasty time, retrieve the fates, 
Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates 
Of death and I^ethe, where (confused) lie 
Great Heaps of ruinous mortality" (etc., through two 
pages). 

This is to the author of the Shakespeare plaj'-s; not 
a hint in the lines of the player Shaksper, or that I, 
M.S. personally knew either the author or the player. 
"Whoever wrote this effusion got his ideas of ' 'Shake- 
speare" by reading the Folio. 

The secret of the authorship has been well kept, and 
to this day there is no direct proof as to who the real 
author was. The Plays exist to demonstrate that there 
did live one man or several, who, singly, or unitedly, 
were equal to their composition; but that man could 
not have been William Shaksper, to whom under the 
stolen name of Shakespeare they have been credited 
for centuries. Undisputed possession during any length 



364 SHAKSPEJR NOT SHAK:eSPKARK. 

of time is not entitled to respect, if the conditions in- 
volve impossibilities. To the time of Galileo, the whole 
civilized world believed that the earth circled around 
the sun every twenty-four hours, and it is only in our 
day that the story of William Tell and the apple has 
been relegated to the limbo of myths. ' ' Our fore- 
fathers were quite confident about the existence of 
Romulus and Remus, of King Arthur, and of Hengist 
and Horsa." 

William Shaksper, the player, is never reported to 
have been seen with a book in his hand, or as having 
owned or read one, nor as seen writing poems, or 
plays; or as having talked about such works; or as 
engaged in literary occupation of any description. As 
I show in Chapter XV, the probability that he could 
write with his own hand is exceedingly small. He 
simply kept his mouth shut, and by a fine irony, the 
world has for three hundred years accepted him as its 
greatest poet. Twenty-five hundred years ago, one 
said: "Even a fool when he holdeth his peace, is 
counted wise; and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed 
a man of understanding. ' ' 



the; sonnets. 365 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THB SONNETS. 

In 1609, a book appeared bearing tbe title "Shake- 
speare's Sonnets. — Never before imprinted. — At Lon- 
don, by G. Eld for T. T. , and are to be sold by Jolm 
Wright dwelling at Christ Church Gate, 1609." T. 
T. stood for one Thomas Thorpe, whom Mr. I<ee 
makes out to have been a publisher's jackall. Thorpe 
dedicated the book "To the only Begetter of these is- 
suing Sonnets, Mr. W. H., all Happiness and that 
Eternity promised by our ever-living poet, wisheth 
the well-wishing Adventure in setting forth. — T. T." 

"Who wrote the Sonnets no one knew in 1 609 , for to say 
they were "Shake-speare's" Sonnets was equivalent to 
saying that they were by an unknown writer. It is 
not known to this day who wrote them, nor to whom 
they were dedicated. They have been attributed to 
Sidney, to I^eicester, to Raleigh, to Francis and Anthony 
Bacon, to the unknown "Shakespeare" of the plays, 
and to the Stratford William Shaksper. It was an age 
of sonnetteering. In 1591, Sidney's sonnets entitled 
"Astrophel and Stella" were published, and "for the 
half dozen years following, the writing of sonnets en- 
gaged more literary activity in this country than at 
any period here or elsewhere. Between 1591 and 1597 
no aspirant to poetic fame failed to seek a patron' s ears 
by a trial of skill on the popular poetic instrument. 
I^ee, 83^ "It was not till the spring of 1593 that 



366 SHAKSPBR NOT SHAKKSPEARBJ. 

Shakespeare (meaning Shaksper) became a sonnetteer 
on an extended scale. Of the 154 Sonnets, the greater 
number were, in all likelihood, composed between 1593 
and the autumn of 1594, during his thirtieth and 
thirty- first year." Id. 85. (Shaksper was born in 
1564.) Of course, there is not a particle of evidence 
showing that this Shaksper ever held a pen in hand, — 
in fact, there is strong evidence to the contrary, but 
the conditions are such as to require that all the 
work done by "William Shake-speare" , whoever he 
was, should be transferred to player Shaksper, and so 
we build up "the bard of our admiration." 

It is of importance to fix the date at which the Son- 
nets were written, 1593-4. 

Judge Jesse Johnson, — "Testimony of the Sonnets 
as to the Authorship," etc. Putnams, 1899, — also 
holding that the Sonnets were composed when William 
Shaksper would have been about thirty years old, 
calls attention to the fact that by their own showing 
they were written by a man well past middle age — 
perhaps fifty or sixty years old, certainly not under 
forty — and therefore could not have been written by 
the Stratford man. 

In Sonnet 73, he speaks of his period of life thus: — 

That time of year, thou mayst in me behold, 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
Upon the boughs which shake against the cold. 

In me thou seest the twilight of each day 
As after sunset fadeth in the west. 

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire 
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie. 



the; sonnsts. 367 

Sonnet 62 : 

But when my glass shows me myself indeed 
Seated and chopped with tann'd antiquity. 

Sonnet 63: 

' Against my love shall be as I am now 
With time's injurious hand crushed and o'erworn; 
When hours have drained his blood andfilVd his brow, 
With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn 
Hath traveled on to age's sleepy night, etc. 

"As clearly as words can say, the poet states that 
he is on the sunset side of life, and indicates that he 
is well advanced toward its close. ' ' 

Sonnet 38: 

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, 
Although she knows m,y days are past the best. 

And wherefore say not I that I am old ? 
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust, 
And age in love loves not to have years told. 

Johnson adds: "These Sonnets seem to be based on 
actual occurrences. If so, certainly we may construe 
them literally; and read literally they appear to be 
an old man's lament at having been superseded by a 
younger though much loved rival." 

As to whom the Sonnets were dedicated, "Mr. W. 
H.", there has been great diversity of opinion among 
the commentators, some holding William, lyord Her- 
bert, to be the man; others, Walter Raleigh, taking 
the first and last letters of his name. But Mr. Lee 
knows by intuition that Shaksper was never on term§ 



368 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE;. 

of intimacy with L,ord. Herbert, "although the con- 
trary has often been recklessly assumed." 94. 

Then he himself recklessly assumes an intimacy be- 
tween Shaksper and the Karl of Southampton. There 
is not merely no evidence of such an intimacy, but no 
probability and no possibility of it. Lee goes to the 
length of devoting twenty-five pages to this Earl, and 
gives a full-page cut of him, that we may know what 
a brave friend Shaksper had. 

Mr. Lee was preceded in the Southampton view by 
Gerald Massey, "The Secret Drama of Shakspeare's 
Sonnets", 1888, who wrote a thick quarto volume in 
an effort to prove that these sonnets were written by 
William Shaksper — in part, to Southampton, as his 
intimate friend; in part, for Southampton to his mis- 
tress, Elizabeth Vernon; in part, for Elizabeth Ver- 
non to Lady Rich; in part, for Southampton, in lament 
for his imprisonment in the Tower; and twenty-seven 
of them "were composed by Shakspeare at the sug- 
gestion of young "Will Herbert upon his infatuation 
for the siren, Lady Rich". In fact Mr. Massey would 
make the Sonnets to be as much of a drama as was 
any one of the Shakespeare plays. 

It is not a diflScult matter to dispose of this South- 
ampton myth. Here in Massey' s pages are letters 
running from 1595 to 1605 by the "kindly old gossip" 
Rowland White, (published in full in the Sydney Me- 
moirs), recounting everything that would interest 
Southampton, or Essex, or Herbert and their friends, 
and nowhere is there a mention of Shaksper or Shake- 
speare. "Herbert was one of the Essex group of 
Shakspeare's 'private friends' ", 230. "Bacon as a 



THE SONNiETS. 369 

frequenter of the theater with Essex and Southampton, 
and other of the private friends" (of Shaksper) etc., 
393. Not only does Rowland White fail to speak of 
Shaksper, but in all the letters of that age detailing 
the gossip of the town as to the movements and occu- 
pations of these nobles, or of anybody else, there is 
no mention of Shaksper' s name as connected with 
Southampton — indeed, no mention at all. So great 
an authority as Richard Grant White assures us that 
"there is no proof whatever that Shaksper was per- 
sonally known to Raleigh, Sidney, Spenser, Bacon, (and 
a dozen other distinguished contemporaries named) 
or to any of less note among the statesmen, scholars 
and artists of his day, except the few of his fellow- 
craftsmen.'''' 

The myths as to Southampton originated in the two 
dedications prefixed by a bookseller to the Venus and 
Adonis, and the Lucrece; and to the apocryphal story 
of gossip Rowe, a hundred years after the alleged 
event, as to Southampton having presented Shaksper 
with a thousand pounds — because without such an in- 
terposition, it was not easy for the quid-nuncs to ac- 
count for Shaksper' s purchase of houses and lands in 
and about Stratford. Shaksper may have seen South- 
ampton through a telescope, but as to a near ap- 
proach to such a luminary, the customs of that age 
make the idea preposterous. 

Mr. W. D. O'Connor, "Hamlet's Note-Book", Bos- 
ton, 1886, sees Raileigh as the author of these Son- 
nets — "The allusions of the writer to his overweening 
pride in himself, to his inordinate love of personal 
adornrnent, (Sou. 125); his costly apparel, (126); at 



370 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPEARK. 

another stage, to his poverty, (37); to his physical 
lameness, (37, 69); to his advanced age (63, 73, 138); 
to his drained blood (63); to his brow, trenched and 
wrinkled by time, to his deeply tanned complexion, the 
ingrained sunburn of the field and the voyage, (62); 
the references to the guilt imputed to himself (m); 
the public scandal, the disgrace (29); the brand upon 
his name (iii, 112); the reference to his expectation 
of a bloody death at the hands of the public execu- 
tioner (174); the Lion-roar of the 125th Sonnet at the 
'suborned informer' , — all this and much more confirm 
the assertion of Raleigh as the author of these strange 
and splendid poems. ' ' 

One of the most strenuous defenders of the Sidney 
authorship is Judge John H. Stotsenburg, and in 
Baconiana for May, 1893, ^^ gives reasons for his 
faith: "The first is, that love is the chief word and 
argument of the Sonnets. It is found in them more 
than 200 times. It is the word which tells the poet's 
name. It is so stated in Sonnet 76. Sidney arranged 
his name in the form of an anagram. Having 
abridged the name into Phil. Sid. , he anagrammatized 
it into Philisides— translated Sid (the abridgment of 
Sid-us) into astra, and retaining the Phil — as derived 
from Philidos, loved, he constructed another pseudonym 
and adopted the poetical name of Astrophel, star of 
love, or love-star. He distinguishes the Lady Rich, 
the bright particular star of his affections, as Stella. 
In the Sonnet 76, he could truthfully say 'that every 
word doth almost tell my name. ' 

"A second reason is based on the proper interpreta- 



the; sonnets. 371 

tion of the 7th line of Son. 20, which has been a 
stumbling block to all the commentators. 

" 'A man in hue, all hues in his controlling.' " 

Sidney had two friends, Sir Edward Dyer and 
Fulke Greville, and his love for them was passing the 
love of women. The Sonnets are addressed to Dyer. 
The three friends in their poems, were fond of punning 
upon their own names. So, in Sonnet 20, Sidney puns 
upon Dyer's name, likening him to a dyer, who in his 
business controls and fixes all hues and colors. 

"Sonnets 37, 66, no and 125 fairly describe Sidney. 
He was poor and proud; his parents were always dis- 
tressed by poverty. He bore the canopy (125) as a 
gen tleman-in- waiting, for the Queen in the summer of 
1578, and he learned enough from personal intercourse 
with courtiers, male and female, to utter the mournful 
cry which is contained in Son. 66. He could well 
say that he was 'made lame by fortune's dearest 
spite' (38). He was not suffered to marry Anne 
Cecil. Penelope Devereux, whom he dearly loved, 
was given to a man whom she hated and despised. 
He was fond of spending money, and withal liberal 
and aristocratic, and yet he could not get money; 
was greatly in debt, was in disgrace at court, was 
a dependent upon lycicester; he had made himself 
'a motley to the view' (no)." 

Son. 127 to 132 clearly refers to Sidney's mistress, 
lyady Rich, and he intimates that Dyer had supplanted 
him in her affections. 

Even Mr. Massey tells us that Shakespeare's Son- 
nets were modeled on those of Sidney: "Twenty 



372 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPKARE. 

years ago I did not do justice to Sidney nor see how 
great a fostering influence he had been to Shakspeare; 
nor know how far their sonnets are bound up to- 
gether. . . . The distilled sweetness, the anti- 
thetic thoughts as well as expression, the serious kind 
of wit are at times pre-eminently Shakspearean. 
, , . In this way I^ove's I^abour's I^ost is alive 
with Sidney." There are many who hold with Judge 
Stotsenburg that Sidney wrote the "Shakespeare" 
Sonnets. The proposition of Shaksper's authorship 
is based on some word of Meres, in 1598, in which he 
attributes by name certain plays to "Shakespeare," 
together with the Venus and Adonis, and I^ucrece, and 
"certain sugred sonnets among his private friends," — 
made so much of by Massey. He and all the Shak- 
spereans assume, without the slightest evidence of it, 
that the "sugred sonnets" spoken of were the sonnets 
afterwards published by Thorpe as "Shakespeare's." 

Judge Holmes holds that the Sonnets were the work 
of Francis Bacon, and finds plenty of corroborating 
evidence in the language, and in the allusions. The 
fact is, that these sonnets can be made to attach to 
many sorts and conditions of men, and to every one 
of them more clearly than to William Shaksper. They 
have nothing whatever in common with what we know 
of or about him. 

Massey argues that the dedication to the Venus and 
Adonis (published 1593) is a fulfillment of the in- 
tentions expressed in Sonnet 26; and hence that the 
first twenty- six sonnets must have been written in 
1592 or 1 591; or perhaps earlier, as "Nash offers good 



the; sonnets. 373 

ground for thinking that Shakespeare had been heard 
of as a sonnetteer as early as 1590." I^et us look at 
this. 

According to Phillipps, William Shaksper came to 
lyondon in 1585, when twenty -one years old; accord- 
ing to R. G. White, in 1586, when twenty-two. 
Phillipps tells us that "removed prematurely from 
school, residing with illiterate relations in a bookless 
neighborhood, it is difficult to believe that when he 
left Stratford he was not all but destitute of polished 
accomplishments. ' ' Also that as soon as he found em- 
ployment with the actors he must have gone with 
them on their provincial tours, and thinks that this 
wandering life began by 1587. Mr. White tells us 
that when young Shaksper left Stratford, "we may be 
sure he had never seen half a dozen books other than 
his horn-book, his lyatin Accidence, and a Bible; that 
"probably there were not half a dozen other books 
in all Stratford." 

Whether the year was 1585 or 1586, Shaksper was 
plainly an unlicked and unlettered country boy when 
he entered I^ondon, of course with a very limited 
vocabulary, and that of the barbarous jargon he had 
learned in his native village. 

But, according to Massey, three or four years have 
scarcely passed, when this young fellow, who all the 
time has lived amid low surroundings, with associates 
classed as vagabonds, is found to be writing sonnets 
to one of the nobles of the realm, in terms that imply 
extreme intimacy between the two, and discovers an 
acquaintance with great ladies, and with the forms and 
usages of their class; and this in the choicest Ian- 



374 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKEISPKARE. 

guage, employing a very extended vocabulary. Fur- 
thermore, the sonnets were modeled on those of Sidney, 
showing careful and continued study of the latter. 
The very statement of the facts is enough to disprove 
Shaksper's authorship of the twenty-six sonnets, and 
these are the key to the remainder. 



lyAST YSJARS AND D^JATH OF SHAKSPEJR. 375 



CHAPTER XIV. 

IvAST YEARS AT STRATFORD, AND DEATH OF SHAK^) 
SPER. 

Green, "Short History of England," 427, says: 
"His last dramas (Othello, etc.) were written in the 
midst of ease and competence, in the house in which 
he lived as a country gentleman with his wife and 
daughter"; speaking, of course, of Shaksper, the ex- 
theater proprietor. Mr. Phillips, on the contrary, 
gives facts which, he says, lead irresistibly to the con- 
clusion that the poet abandoned literary occupations a 
considerable period before his decease. So he was not 
writing his dramas in the house at Stratford, in which 
he lived as a country gentleman. He lived there, at 
any rate, as a most unfortunate country gentleman. 
"If truth and not romance is to be invoked, were the 
woodbine and honeysuckle within reach of the poet's 
death-bed, their fragrance would have been neutralized 
by their vicinity to middens, fetid water-courses, mud- 
walls and piggeries." H.-P., I, 267. He went back 
to Stratford, "the dirtiest village in all Britain," be- 
cause he liked the sort of people who lived there, and 
the life they led. He would have been utterly out of 
place in a genteel or cultivated community. What his 
neighbors thought of his 15,000 or 21,000 vocabulary, 
we are not told. Imagine his addressing them in the 
language of Hamlet or lyove's Labour 's Lost. It could 
not have astonished them more had he set up a Krupp 



376 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKE;SP:eARB. 

gun in the dooryard. Traditions of the vocabulary, 
and the unknown tongue he had brought to Stratford, 
would certainly have lasted one hundred years. That, 
and his amazing erudition, did not discover itself in 
any effort to educate his daughters, for, at the age of 
twenty-seven, Judith could not sign her name. The 
author of the plays wrote: "Ignorance is the curse of 
God. Knowledge the wings wherewith we fly to 
heaven." But the player Shaksper allowed his chil- 
dren to grow up in ignorance. His oldest daughter 
was the wife of a physician, himself an author of 
medical works, and after the death of her husband she 
was unable to distinguish between manuscripts in his 
handwriting and those of other men.* 

The immediate descendants of the player stood on 
the same level of illiteracy with his ancestors. As to 
writing plays in his retirement, the books the author 
would have had to consult to write simply the five 
plays mentioned by Green would have filled any 
room in his house. If Green is correct, at the 
player's death, some of the greatest of the immortal 
plays "must have been lying about the house in 
manuscript, running the risk of illiterate Judith tear- 
ing them up to make curl-papers of ' . But Phillipps 
assures us that the facts which he has been con- 



* The conversation here recorded would appear to show that 
Mrs. Hall's education had not been of an enlarged character; 
that books and manuscripts, even when they were the produc- 
tion of her own husband, were not of much interest to her. 
Were it otherwise, it would be difficult to account for the per- 
tinacity with which she insisted upon the book of cases not be- 
ing in the doctor's handwriting." H.-P., I, 277. 



LAST YBARS AND D^ATH OF SHAKSPKR. 377 

sidering lead to the irresistible conclusion that William 
Shaksper was engaged in no literary work for a con- 
siderable period before his decease. That he was not 
is also evident from the fact that at his death there 
was no manuscript of a play, or anything else, in his 
house — not even a printed book; and that he had no 
ownership in manuscripts or in printed plays. 

"It was the general opinion in the convivial days of 
Shaksper that 'a quart of ale is a dish for a king. ' 
So impressed were nearly all classes of society by its 
attractions, it was imbibed wherever it was found. 
. . , It would appear from this tradition that the 
poet, one summer's morning, set out from his native 
town for a walk over Bardon hill to the village of 
Bidford, six miles distant, a place said to have been 
noted for its revelry. When he had nearly reached 
his destinatipn, he happened to meet with a shepherd, 
and jocosely inquired of him if the Bidford Drinkers 
were at home. The rustic, perfectly equal to the 
occasion, replied that the Drinkers were absent, but 
that he would easily find the Sippers, and that the 
latter might perhaps be sufficiently jolly to meet his 
expectations. The anticipations of the shepherd were 
fully realized, and Shaksper, in bending his way 
homeward, late in the evening, found an acceptable 
interval of rest under the branches of a crab tree 
which was situated about a mile from Bidford. . . , 
It is added that he was overtaken with drowsiness, 
and that he did not renew the course of his journey 
until the following morning. , . That there is at 
least some foundation for the tale may be gathered 
from ,the fact that, as early as the year 1762, the tree 



378 shakspe;r not shakbspejar:]^. 

then known as Shaksper's Canopy, was regarded at 
Stratford-on-Avon as an object of great interest' ' . H. - 
P., I, 236. 

"An amplification of it (the traditional account) is 
narrated by Jordan in a manuscript written about the 
year 1770: 'I shall not hesitate relating it as it was 
verbally delivered to me. Our poet was extremely 
fond of drinking hearty draughts of English ale, and 
gloried in being thought a person of superior eminence 
in that profession, if I may be allowed the phrase. 
. . , Our bard and his companions got so in- 
tolerably intoxicated that they were not able to con- 
tend any longer, and accordingly set out on their re- 
turn to Stratford, but had not got above half a mile 
on the road ere they found themselves unable to pro- 
ceed any farther, and were obliged to lie down under 
a crab-tree, where they took up their repose until 
morning," etc., etc. Id., II, 325. 

' 'Some of the ramifications of the tale are sufiiciently 
ludicrous. Thus we are told in Brewer's Description 
of the Count}^ of Warwick that those who repeat the 
tradition in the neighborhood of Stratford invariably 
assert that the whole party slept undisturbed from the 
Saturday night till the following Monday morning, 
when they were aroused by workmen going to their 
labor." Id., 328. It is evident that the Stratfordians 
believed the rich owner of New Place to have been 
a confirmed toper. 

We have seen the boy, the youth, the man in Lon- 
don, and have come to understand pretty well what 
manner of individual he was; this man "who, after 
such thaumaturgy, could go down to Stratford and 



i,AST ye;ars and dbath of shakspkr. 379 

live there for years, only collecting his dividends from 
the Globe theater, lending money on mortgage, and 
leaning over his gate to chat and bandy quips with his 
neighbors". lyowell, 172. 

In his retirement at Stratford, Rowe says, (on his 
own surmise) writing in 1709, nearly one hundred 
years after the player's death, that the concluding 
period of Shakspere's life "was spent as all men of 
good sense will wish theirs may be, in ease, retirement, 
and conversation of friends' ' ; that he retained his lit- 
erary intimacies to the end, and occasionally visited 
I^ondon; and "was content with the fortune his inces- 
sant labors had secured. ' ' That is it ! He had worked 
incessantly to make a fortune, and at the same time is 
supposed to have worked incessantly to gain a vocab- 
ulary, a knowledge of the Bible, and all sorts of learn- 
ing. Two bodies cannot be in the same place at the 
same time. Rowe says nothing of any tradition that 
he was engaged in writing or amending plays, or that 
he was the possessor of an astounding vocabulary. 

Finally the ex-player dies of a fever contracted by 
spending a night under a tree, or on the road, after a 
big spree. H.-P., I, 261, puts the case euphemistic- 
ally thus: "It is recorded that the party was a jovial 
one; and according to a late, but apparently genuine, 
tradition, when the great dramatist was returning to 
New Place in the evening, he had taken more than 
was conducive to pedestrian accuracy. Shortly after- 
wards, he was seized by the lamentable fever which 
terminated fatally, April 23rd, 16 16. The cause of 
the malady, then attributed to undue festivity, would 



380 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKIISPDAR:^. 

now be readily discernible in the . wretched sanitary- 
conditions surrounding his residence. ' ' 

Shaksper's Will bears date the 25th March, 1616, 
and he died the following April. The preamble of the 
"Will stated that the testator was "in perfect health". 
Phillipps, I, 203, says: "It is satisfactory to know 
that the invalid's mind was as yet unclouded, several 
of the interlineations that were added on the occasion 
having obviously emanated from himself. And it is 
not necessary to follow the general opinion that the 
signatures betray the tremulous hand of illness. It 
may be observed that the words 'by me' , which, the 
autographs excepted, are the only ones in the poet's 
handwriting known to exist, appear to have been 
penned with ordinary firmness. ' ' 

Per contra, William Winter, "Shakespeare's Eng- 
land", Bd. 1896, 171, says: "His ~ handwriting in 
the three signatures to that paper conspicuously ex- 
hibit the uncertainty and lassitude of his shattered 
nerves." The fact is, that the first signature was 
written in a sturdy hand, indicating neither feebleness 
nor nervousness. The same is true of the ' ' Willin' ' 
of the second signature, and of the "By me William", 
of the third. Perhaps the uncertainty discovered con- 
sists in the fact that the three signatures exhibit three 
styles of writing. Possibly that was the result of 
shattered nerves. 

In the Will, Shaksper disposes of a great amount 
of real property, houses, lands, orchards, lying in half 
a dozen towns, and in I^ondon; of personal property, 
money, gold to buy rings for several individuals, his 
"silver gilt bole" to Judith, his plate and jewels and 



ivAsT ye;ars and de^a^h o^ shakspkr. 381 

household stuff, to Dr. Hall and Susanna, his daughter, 
and in an interlineation gives "unto my wife my sec- 
ond best bed with the furniture," there being no fur- 
ther mention of her in the instrument. "It is strange 
that she does not appear as executrix, that she had no 
life interest left her in house or furniture, and that in 
the draft of the Will, as made in January, her name 
does not appear to have been mentioned at all. It is 
only in the subsequent interlineations that the bequest 
appears." Fleay, 72. 

"Shakspere's will was one of great particularity, 
making little legacies to nephews and nieces, and 
leaving swords and rings to friends and acquaintances; 
and yet his wife's name is omitted from the docu- 
ment in its original form, and only appears by an 
afterthought, in an interlineation, as if his attention 
had been called to the omission. The lack of any 
other bequest than the furniture of her chamber is of 
small moment in comparison with the slight shown by 
that interlineation." R. G. White. 

lyce says, 274: "Several wills of the period have 
been discovered in which a bed-stead or other article 
of household furniture formed part of a wife's in- 
heritance, but none, except Shakspere's, is forth- 
coming in which a bed forms the sole bequest. At 
the same time, the precision with which Shakspere's 
will accounts for and assigns to other legatees every 
known item of his property, refutes the conjecture 
that he had set aside any of it under a previous 
settlement or jointure with a view to making inde- 
pendent provision for his wife. Her right to a 
widow's dower — z. e., to a third share in freehold 



382 shakspe^r not shakb^speiare;. 

estate^ — was not subject to testamentary disposition, 
but Shakspere bad taken steps to prevent ber from 
benefiting — at any rate to tbe full extent — by tbat 
legal arrangement. He had barred her dower in case 
of his latest purchase, viz., the house at Blackfriars. 
Such procedure is pretty conclusive proof that he had 
the intention of excluding her from the enjoyment of 
his possessions after his death." An agreeable man 
to live with and be bound to, truly. I have before 
quoted the writer in the Atlantic Monthly, December, 
1897, that Mrs. Anne Shakespeare "served as raw 
material to be worked up into Imogenes and Rosa- 
linds — enchanting creatures!" 

Malone says: "His wife had not wholly escaped his 
memory; he had forgot her — he had recollected her — 
but so recollected her as more strongly to mark how 
little he esteemed her; he had already cut her off, not 
indeed with a shilling, but with an old bed. ' ' He had 
married the widow Whately in haste, and had re- 
pented at leisure. He ran away from wife and babies, 
and for nine years had deserted them; and when he 
came to make his Will, he forgot that he had a wife. 
For myself, I see nothing to be surprised at in this 
behavior of William Shaksper — it was thoroughly char- 
acteristic of him. 

There is no mention of library, or books, or poems, 
or plays, or manuscripts, or any literary effects what- 
ever. 

If William Shaksper was the author of the plays, he 
was, by the evidence of the plays themselves, a man 
of vast and varied learning, owner of verj^ many 
books, in both ancient and modern languages; and 



tAS'T YiEARS AND D:^A1'H OI^ SHAKSPBJRi 3S3 

"he left beldnd him, unpublished at his death, such 
marvelous and mighty works as the Tempest, Mac- 
beth, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, 
and many more; and while he carefully bequeathed 
his old clothes, and disposed of his second best bed, he 
not only made no provision for the publication of his 
works, but no mention of either books or manuscripts, 
or book-cases, or writing table, or anything at all sug- 
gestive of literary labor. What man capable of writing 
Macbeth and Julius Caesar, and knowing their value 
to mankind, knowing that they lay in his house in 
some cabinet, box, or press, probably in but one manu- 
script copy each, and that they might perish in the 
hands of his illiterate family and bookless neighbors 
— would, while carefully remembering so much of the 
litter and refuse of the world, have died and made no 
provision for their pubUcation ?" Donnelly, loo. 

"Not only is there no mention of his literary friends, 
but an entire absence of reference to his own composi- 
tions. . . . The editors of the First Folio speak, 
indeed, in a tone of regret at his death having ren- 
dered a personal edition an impossibility; but they 
merely allude to this as a matter of fact and as a devo- 
lution of the task upon themselves. They nowhere 
say, as they might naturally have done had it been 
the case, that the poet himself had meditated such an 
undertaking, or even that the slightest preparations 
for it had been made during the years of his retire- 
ment. . . .It may be safely averred that the lead- 
ing facts in the case, especially the apathy exhibited 
by the poet in his days of leisure, all tend to the per- 
suasion that the composition of the immortal dramas 



384 SHAKSP:eR NOT SHAKKSPE^ARK. 

was mainly stimulated by pecuniary results that were 
desired for the realization of social and domestic ad- 
vantages. It has been frequently observed that, if 
this view is accepted, it is at the expense of invest- 
ing him with a mean and sordid disposition". H.-P. 
I, 262. Certainly, this man was not the author of the 
plays, and had no interest in them, pecuniary or other. 
His life had been devoted to a single object and by his 
incessant labors he had reached it. "Where your treas- 
ure is, there will your heart be also, and Shaksper's 
treasure was not in literature, but in nuggets. 



sriAiisPE^R ne;ve;r i,e;arni;d to write. 385 



CHAPTER XV. 

THAT WIIvLIAM SHAKSPER NEVER IvEARNED TO 
WRITE. 

I liere propose to show that the best possible reason 
for the absence, not only of book manuscripts among 
William Shaksper's effects, but of letters, memoranda, 
or any scrap of his writing whatever, was, that this 
man never learned the manual art of writing. 

The author of the Shakespeare plaj^s must have cov- 
ered scores of reams of paper with his written lines, 
and have accumulated memoranda innumerable. Of 
the other man, player, and rich citizen of Stratford, 
there are extant just five specimens of his handwrit- 
ing, if we are to accept all that his devotees claim for 
him. Five times he is alleged to have signed his 
name, as is evidenced by the existing signatures, and 
one of them is prefixed by the two words "By me." 
That is all there is to show of the literary work of 
William Shaksper. Following Malone's Inquiry, 
119: — "On the loth of March, 161 2-1 3, Shaksper 
purchased from one Henry Walker a small estate in 
Blackfriars, for one hundred and forty pounds, eighty 
of which he appears to have paid down; and he 
mortgaged the premises for the remainder. In the 
year 1768, the mortgage-deed, which was dated the 
nth of March, but without doubt executed on the 
same day as the deed of bargain and sale, (like our 



386 SHAIiSPER NOT SHAkkSpEAre;. 

modern coneyances of I,ease and Release), was found 
by Mr. Albany Wallis among the title deeds of the 
Rev. Mr. Featherstonaugh, of Oxford, Surrey, and 
was presented by him to the late Mr. Garrick. From 
that deed the f ac-simile above mentioned was made. ' ' 
The f ac-simile was published by Malone, in 1790, and 
all the copies of this signature in books of later date 
follow Malone, because the original deed, shortly after 
1790, or before 1796, disappeared. 

Malone continues: "As I have not the pleasure of 
being acquainted with Mrs. Garrick, to whom I was in- 
debted on that occasion, L,ord Orford very obligingly 
requested her to furnish me once more with the deed 
to which our poet's autograph is affixed; but that 
lady, after a careful search, was not able to find it, it 
having by some means or other been either mislaid or 
stolen from her." (I see that Mr. lyce, 284, says that 
this mortgage-deed has been in the British Museum 
since 1858. When and where it was found he does not, 
tell us.) 

Malone — further: — "On the same day on which I 
received this account, I called upon Mr. Wallis, to 
whom the deeds of Mr. Featherstonaugh, after having 
been a long time out of his hands, have been lately 
restored; among them he luckily met with the coun- 
terpart of the original deed of bargain and sale, made 
on the loth of March, 1612-13, which furnished me 
with our poet's name. . . . Mr. Wallis having 
obligingly permitted me to make use of this new 
autograph of our poet, a f ac-simile of it will be found 
in Plate II, No. X." 



SHAKSPKR NKVKR I.E;ARNE;D TO WRITS. 387 

I here give a photographic copj^ of this No. X, 
taken from Malone's Plate II; and also an enlarge- 
ment of it, that each letter and stroke may be seen 
distinctly. (The letter in the lower left hand corner 
of this cut, Malone gives as the German r, "much 
used by scriveners in the time of Elizabeth and 



n^x 




N9X 



/jnvO^^i^^ 




James", p. 122.) Knight, p. 164, says of this coun- 
terpart of the original deed; that it was sold in 1841, 
at auction, and was purchased by the corporation of 
London; in whose possession it remains to this day. 
Halliwell-Phillipps says, I, 239: ' 'The conveyance deeds 
of this house bear the date of March the loth, 161 3, but 
in all probability they were not executed until the fol- 
lowing day, and at the same time that the mortgage was 



388 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPKARE). 

effected. The latter transaction was completed in Shake- 
speare' s presence on the eleventh. . . . The inde- 
pendent witnesses present on the occasion consisted of 
Atkinson . . . and a person by the name of 
Overy. ... To these were joined the then usual 
official attestors, the scriveners who drew up the deeds 
and his assistant,* the latter, one Henry I^awrence, 
having the honor of lending his seal to the great drama- 
tist, who thus, to the great disappointment of posterity, 
impressed the wax of both his labels with the initials 
H. ly. instead of those of his own name." 

On this recital, I would observe that Mr. Phillipps 
takes pains to tell us that the mortgage was completed 
in Shaksper's presence, which apparently is a very 
odd statement, implying, as it does, that mortgages 
were sometimes completed w^hen the mortgagors were 
not present. But at that day, "sealing alone was suf- 
ficient to authenticate a deed' ' , and so it was until the 
reign of Charles II. Writing was a rare accomplish- 
ment. Also, as Mr. Phillipps' fac-similes show, signa- 
tures were sometimes signed by proxy,, by one of the 
bystanders who was able to write. Thus, Vol. II, p. 
233, Sept. 20, 1575, William Wedgewood sells to Ed- 
ward Willis two tenements in Stratford, one of which 
was in the possession of John Shakesper (sic) yeoman." 
On this Mr. Phillipps says: "This indenture was wit- 
nessed by John Shakesper, but it is scarcely necessary 
to observe that the name is not an autograph," — be- 

* Malone, p. 235, tells us that "those who are conversant with 
deeds of that period know that the Scrivener who drew them, 
and his servant or apprentice, were almost always witnesses to 
them." 



SHAKSPER NEVKR I^EARN^D TO WRITE. 389 

cause, as before said, John could not write, and made 
his mark. Phillipps gives £ac-similes of the name and 
the accompanying words in each case, ' 'the tenement 
of John Shakesper yeoman", and "Wytnesse John 
Shakesper", (Wyth my hand). Here John witnesses 
a deed, but another man writes his name. I have 
copied this signature in Chap, i (cut 2). 

Again, on page 231, we read: — "On 12 Feby., 1569, 
Thomas Stringer granted a lease (of a certain estate 
mentioned) to Alexr. Webbe, and the indenture, as well 
as a bond of even date for the performance of the cove- 
nants, was witnessed amongst others by John Shaxspere, 
the name in each instance being in the handwriting of 
the scrivener, and without a mark. ' ' Not only deeds 
and mortgages, but bonds attested by a witness whose 
name was signed not by his own hand, but by that of 
another man! 

On p. 238, we read: "At a meeting of the corpora- 
tion held on 5 September, 1582, Johannes Shaxper 
(sic) was present, and voted for John Sadler, the suc- 
cessful candidate for office of bailiff ' ' , etc. , and a fac- 
simile of John's name, as written by the clerk, is given, 
p. 236, beautifully done, each letter distinct, the ter- 
minal one being the German r, undoubtedly making 
the name Shaxper, as Phillipps here renders it. This 
fac-simile was also, before given. Chap. I, cut 4. 

Phillipps does not speak of the peculiar r, which in 
this instance he calls r, though usually he interprets 
it re, and we would know nothing of it except for 
Malone, who not only says it is the German r, much 
in vogue among the scriveners of that age, but gives 
a cut of it, in the corner of his copy of the Deed sig- 



390 



SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPE^ARK. 



nature No. X, reproduced here on page 387, that there 
may be no mistake as to which he means. It is the 
same letter, as appears by the presentation given by 
Malone, as that which distinctly ends the first of the Will 



^f^i-QUc.^^ 




^^l^v&U<^_ 




^.-J 






/y^ C:. ^ I'i 



f..r> 






signatures, and the second signature, following Lee. 
It is the habit of the Shakspereans to call it re, so as 
to get the name Shakspere, for it would never do to 
allow the Stratford man's name to end in J>er, when 
the poet's name ended in peare. 



SHAKSPI5R ne;ver i.karne;d to write;. 



391 



I now give cuts of the counterpart deed and the 
mortgage signatures, issued by the Boston Public Li- 
brary, under the supervision of the then librarian, 
Hon. Mellen Chamberlain. 

No. I (p. 390) is a copy of Malone's 1790 figure, the 



i^(Sf<^^rV^ 




mortgage; the other was taken from the counterpart of 
the deed, now owned by the corporation of London. 

No. 2 shows the wax on the label, stamped with the 
initials of Henry Lawrence. Yet W. Shaksper, ex- 
showman, is alleged to have owned a signet ring, and 



392 SHAKSPEJR NOT shake;spe;arb;. 

such an article forms part of the ' 'museum of doubt- 
ful relics and gim-cracks" that R. G.White saw at the 
house in Henley Street. 

The cut next given is a copy of all the five signa- 
tures, taken for me by Merritt, photographer, Wash- 
ington, July, 1896, from Drake's "Shakespeare and 



-■^^'^'i^'/t'l 










His Times", London, 1817, at the Congressional Li- 
brary. The signatures as given by Drake, have been 
re-copied in manj^ works of recent years, as Burr's 
Proof, Donnelly's Crj^ptogram, Reed's Bacon v. Shake- 
speare and others. 

Drake's page is headed, "Five Genuine Autographs 



SHAKSPER NEVER LEARNED TO WRITE. 393 

of Shakespeare." Then follow the signatures, and 
beneath, this explanation. "No. i is from Shake- 
speare's Mortgage, 1612-13. No. 2 is from the Deed — 
Malone's Plate II, No. X. No. 3 is from the first brief 
of Shakespeare's Will; No. 4 is from the second; No. 
5 from the third brief of the Will." Dr. Drake says 
that the second Will signature is written Shakspe re, 
with a hiatus. On his fac-simile of this signature — 
over and above the hiatus — appears what has been 
taken for a capital E, and on the tail of it, elevated to 
the top, a small r. Drake explains these super- 
imposed characters thus: "The hiatus is unaccounted 
for in the fac-simile given by Malone; but in the plate 
of Chalmers' Apology (1797), it is found to have been 
occasioned by the intrusion of the word the of the pre- 
ceding line." Drake has followed Chalmers in his 
fac-simile, rather than Malone, and what appears to 
be ^ r turns out to be h e, part of the word the of the 
line next over the signature. (In I^ee's copy of these 
signatures, presently to be given, it will be seen that 
the writer of this signature jumped over the loop of 
the h of upper line, so that there is no letter between 
the e and the r. ) 

There is no important discrepancy between the Deed 
and Mortgage signatures as given by Malone, Drake, 
and Harris. I have copied the several versions of 
them, in order that there may be no mistake as to 
what Shaksper's name was, when he had retired from 
business, and lived at his ease, the rich man of Strat- 
ford. 

In the autumn of his life he was known as Shak- 
spar, or Shaksper, if these deeds are worth anything 



394 shakspe;r not shakespe;are;. 

as evidence. Both may or may not have been signed 
in the absence of Shaksper, for 
Phillipps' assertion that he was 
present at the completion of the 
mortgage is merely his own con- 
jecture, but certainly the other 
party to them accepted the names 
as written as correct. If these 
signatures are genuine, the Shak- 
spereans may explain how it was 
that a man, on twice signing his 
name within the period of a few 
minutes, or even a day, should 
write it in two entirely different 
hands, and spell both given 
names and surnames differently. 
One surname is spelled Shak- 
spar. When first written it 
was Shakspr, and the a was an 
^*r afterthought to make a proper 

H .^^ syllable. The other is spelled 

I ^\. Shaksper. The W and in of 

j^ >^the first signature are not like 
the corresponding letters of 
William of the second, and no 
one letter of one surname is like 
the corresponding letter of the 
other. Clearly, the two signa- 
tures are not by the same hand, 
however it may be explained. 
Nevertheless, suppose the signa- 
tures genuine, as all Shakspe- 





SHAKSPER ne;ve;r IvKarnkd to write. 395 

reans seem to believe, or wish to believe, then what 
was this man's name? In 1612, it certainly was 
Shaksper, and by no means Shakspere. If there is 
an occasion in life when exactness is called for, it is 
in signing deeds and mortgages, and beyond all ques- 



~1 






#^vf4?v*...- --^-^ 







tion, the parties with whom the player was dealing, in 
1612, when the Blackfriars lot was bought, understood 
his name to be as he then wrote it, or had it written, 
Shakspar, or Shaksper — in pronunciation there would 
be no difference. 

The other three signatures are written on the three 
sheets of Shaksper' s Will, which document is pre- 



396 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPEARE. 

served in the Prerogative Office, Doctor's Commons, 
London. 

Malone, "An Inquiry", 1796, says: "In the year 
1776, Mr. Steevens, in my presence, traced with the 
utmost accuracy the three signatures affixed by the 
poet to his Will"; and he gives copies of them in Plate 
II, Nos. XI, XII, XIII. I have had a photographic 
copy, natural size, and another set enlarged, made 
from this Plate II, and give them on pages 394 
and 395. 

I present also a cut of the second and third Will 
signatures, put forth by the Boston Public Library: 

''' / ^' 

/ 

On asking for the history of the Boston copy of the 
five signatures, Mr. Putnam, the Librarian, kindly 
wrote me, June, 1896, as follows: "The Shakespeare 
autographs mentioned by you", (the two of the deeds 
and the three of the Will), "are heliot5^pe reproduc- 
tions of a lithograph published at London, in 1843, by 
T. Todd, with a title as follows: 'Shakespeare's auto- 
graphs just published, price 2s. The most correct 
copies of all the authentic autographs of William 
Shakespeare; consisting of the autographs attached to 
the Will in the Prerogative Office; that written upon 
the fly leaf of Montaigne's Essays in the British Mu- 



SHAKSPER NKVER IvEARNED TO WRITE. 397 

seum; the signature attached to the original [deed] 
purchased for the city of lyondon I^ibrary); and the 
one to the mortgage deed (dated) the following day. 
All most accurately copied and also enlarged. . . . 
By J. Harris.' " 

This means that the three Will signatures, and the 
one from the counterpart deed were copied from the 
originals by J. Harris. The signature of the mort- 
gage deed must, however, have been copied from 
Steevens or Malone. Harris' copy of the first Will 
signature shows the effect of time after 1776, when 
Steevens made his tracing, the letters being abraded 
and broken up, the surname quite unrecognizable. 
Therefore I do not give a copy of it. These signatures 
are not only entirely, (in every letter), unlike the two 
signatures of the deeds, but are unlike each other. 
The first one is not badly written. The a is the Ger- 
man a, the terminal r is also given in the German 
form. 

(I gave a cut, (4) on p. 12, showing the name of 
John Shaksper ending with the German r, and so read 
by Phillipps; also another, cut 5, of the same letter 
written hastily. ) 

The Christian name over the other in the first of 
these signatures, indicates that the writer was not ac- 
customed to sign his name, or to write other persons 
names, as a business man invariably did and does, the 
given name in line with the surname. 

The second signature in both names is poorly 
written; as Malone saw it, the letters are S h a k sp e, 
followed by a wide break and the German r. 

The original hand that made the third signature 



398 



SHAKSPKR NOT SHAK:eSP]eARK. 



safely reached /, but what follows has been a per- 
plexity to the editors. Malone says that he concluded 
at first that the letters were eare , but later, that what 
he had taken for an a was a superfluous stroke when 
the poet came to write the letter r. In his copy, all 




the lines here are light, and the superfluous stroke he 
speaks of is distinct and is nothing like the letter a. 
Canceling this stroke, the name is left Shaksper, for 
the final letter is only a bungling attempt at an r. In 
I^ee, the lines after p are heavier than in Malone, but 
the superfluous stroke is just as in Malone. In the 
version of this signature on Knight's, page i68, I^ife of 



SHAKSPKR NBVER I^l^ARNBjD TO WRIT:^. 399 

W. S. (1843), all the lines of the last syllable are 
heavy, and he gets a very fair a out of the z mark — 
a case of fraud. 

I offer a much enlarged copy of the letters a ksp of 
Malone's three Will signatures in order to show how- 
different they are, and how impossible it is that one 
and the same hand wrote them (see p. 398): 

On the following page I give a copy of the three 
Will signatures from Lee's lyife of William Shake- 
speare, lyondon and New York, 1898. 

By this it appears that the first signature is worn 
Dut, It is in much worse condition than when Harris 
saw it. • For a copy of this signature we have, there- 
fore, to go to Malone. As Mr. I^ee has photographed 
the lower line of the second sheet of the Will, it is 
seen how the hiatus in the surname of the second 
signature came to be. The loop was jumped, and 
there is no character between the e and the final r. 
This last letter is the German r, identical with the r 
shown in Malone's Fig. X, and also in the r copied 
from Woodberry, before given in Chap. I., --^^>c^ 

This is the letter that ends the first and second Will 
signatures, and in all three of them the name is Shak- 
sper — nothing else. 

There is no discrepancy between the letters of the 
third signature in Malone and lyce, except that the 
flourish to the r ends in a fork in Lee (so in Harris), 
but not in Malone. 

The three signatures to the Will were no doubt 
made almost simultaneously, say within a period of 
ten or fifteen minutes. The second and third a are 
least' unlike, but they were made by different hands; 



400 



shaksp:^r not shakkspejarb. 




SHAKSPKR NEVKR I.EARNE;d TO WRITE). 40I 

and they are both, of different species from the German 
a of the first signature. There are three sorts of k, 
if the first letter so called be not an x, three of s, 
three of p, and the second p is unlike that letter in 
any known alphabet. (I might have shown the final 
letter of these three signatures which also discovers 
three different forms). 

The third signature is preceded by the words By 
vie, and these, and the William, are well written, and 
by a different hand from the one that wrote the sur- 
mame following, and the one that wrote the second 
signature, and, again, from the hand that wrote the 
first. 

Of the five signatures, no one is Shakspere; the two 
on the deeds are Shakspar and Shaksper; the first on 
the Will is Shaksper, the second Shaksper, and, dis- 
missing Malone's superfluous stroke, the third is 
Shaksper. Nowhere is there any Shakespeare, the 
name under which the plays were written. 

Supposing for a moment that one hand could have 
written the five signatures, what does it prove? 
In the first — on the mortgage — he writes Wm. for 
"William; in the next, made at the same time, he 
writes William at length, but on top of the surname. 
Again, in the first of the Will signatures, he writes 
William above the surname. The next time, he at- 
tempts to get the names in line, but misses it con- 
siderably, the given name^ — now spelled Willin — ^be- 
ing raised to the level of the top of the surname, and, 
moreover, it is separated from the latter by a notice- 
ably wide space. The third time he writes William, 
gets it at the proper distance from the surname, but 



402 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPEJARK. 

the latter has tumbled, and is almost wholly below the 
level of the given name. These little things show 
that the writer was not in the habit of signing his 
own name, or accustomed to the use of a pen. William 
Shaksper accumulated a large property by all sorts of 
trading, and, if he could handle a pen at all, must 
have been in the daily habit of signing his name to 
one piece of paper or other, bills, notes, receipts, 
money orders, contracts, deeds, etc. Is it to be be- 
lieved that a man who, for fully twenty years, had 
been in active business, if he could write, never at- 
tained a fixed and recognizable signature; that he 
never wrote his name in a straight line; that in the 
same hour, and on the same document, he would 
sign his name William and Willin, and his surname 
in as many different styles of letters as he made 
signatures ? 

Thos. Greene, lawyer, for years resided (H.-P. ) 
under some unknown conditions at New Place. He 
and other clerks did what signing of Shaksper's name 
was necessary in the line of his business. The 
writer Shakespeare, who penned thousands of verses, 
would have run them in straight lines, and would not 
have signed his given name above, or out of line with 
his surname. He would have written and signed his 
name as became a gentleman and a scholar, and not 
like a Hodge, fresh from the plough. So the man 
Shaksper, as a business man, and he certainly was 
that — would have written as became a business man, 
in one uniform style, if he knew how to write at all. 

His signature at the end of his life would have been 
as in his middle age, or in his youth, It is so with 



SHAKSPBR NKVEIR LEARNED TO WRITE. 403 

every man, and is a matter of course. Men do not 
put on a new handwriting once a week, as a caterpil- 
lar puts on a new skin, much less change it three 
times in one day. In "Proof that Shaksper could not 
write", by W. H. Burr, Washington, 1886, the au- 
thor is of the opinion that William Shaksper "was 
unable to spell or write his name, and that he simply 
traced a copy set him at different times by different 
persons." But in that case, the three signatures 
of the Will, made one after the other, should have 
been essentially alike, following the same copy. 
Every school boy follows copy, and could not 
write the lines unlike. I believe that the scrivener 
and a bystander wrote the two deed and mort- 
gage signatures. Very likely the vendee and mort- 
gagor was not present at the execution of these 
instruments. When it came to signing the three 
sheets of the Will; this is about what happened; the 
scrivener's apprentice, or servant, began the signing 
for the testator, and in a bold hand wrote "William 
Shaksper". Drake said, in 1817, "It has. been sup- 
posed that, according to the practice in Shakspere's 
time the name in the first sheet was written by the 
scrivener who drew the Will." This accounts for the 
peculiar a, the German a, which both Drake and 
Skottowe read as ac; (Shack) the German p, the Ger- 
man r, and the peculiar k. 

In the age of which we are treating, very great lati- 
tude was allowed in executing legal papers. Cruise, 
Digest of the I,aw of Real Property, Title XXXII, 
Chap. II, s. 63, says: "Sealing alone was sufl&cient to 
authenticate a deed till the reign of King Charles 



404 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKiESPKAR^. 

II." He goes on to saj^ that it was of no consequence 
who sealed the deed, or what it was sealed with — even 
a stick: "If I take it up after it is sealed, and deliver 
it as my deed, it is an agreement to the sealing, and 
so a good deed". Phillipps implies, as we have seen, 
that a mortgage could be executed in the absence of 
the mortgagor. There was no reason at all why Will- 
iam Shaksper should have been present at the execu- 
tion of either mortgage or deed if he did not care to 
be. His signature was not essential, and anybody 
could aflSx the seals, as it seems the scrivener's clerk, 
Henry I^awrence, did. "We have seen that John 
Shaksper appears as a witness to a Deed, also to a 
Lease and Bond, his name written in full in each case, 
though it is stated positively that he was never able to 
write, and that his sign-manual was a two-pronged 
mark. We are told by Halli well- Phillipps, II, 392, 
that ' 'in those days there was so much laxity in every- 
thing connected with testamentary formalities that in- 
convenience would seldom have arisen from any kind 
of carelessness. No one, except in subsequent litiga- 
tion, would ever have dreamt of asking if erasures pre- 
ceded signatures, how, or when interlineations were 
added, if the witnesses were present at the execution, 
or, in fact, any questions at all. The officials thought 
nothing of admitting to probate a mere copy of a Will 
that was destitute of the signatures both of testator 
and witnesses." 

Also Drake assures us that on signing a Will, the 
first sheet was usually subscribed in the name of the 
testator by the scrivener who wrote the Will. We may 
understand, therefore, that it made no difference to 



SHAKSP:eR ne;vb;r i,i;arnkd to write. 405 

anybody concerned whether the testator put his hand 
to the Will or not. 

The given name of the second signature begins with 
a German capital W, and is written in a firm, strong 
hand, very different from the tremulous hand which 
traced the letters Shak sp oi the surname. I think 
the hand that wrote the Willin, wrote the final letter 
of the surname. Willin was then a familiar form of 
William, just as Bill or Billy is now. A man signing 
his Will would not make one of the three signatures a 
nickname. One of the neighbors certainly wrote the 
Willin, and probably the hand of the testator was 
guided into Shaksp, and then stopped, the friend add- 
ing the e7\ If the whole name had been written by 
the same man, the surname would have been written 
in a strong hand, and would not have been at an un- 
reasonable distance from the other, and below it. 

Finally, some one who wrote a comparatively neat 
hand wrote the "By me William" of the third signa- 
ture, and then helped the testator's fingers to develop 
the Shaksper, making a break after the p — in fact, the 
pen escaped control, as appears by the long tail to the 

unformed e. When recovered, it made the "superflu- 
ous stroke' ' spoken of by Malone to start the pen and 
added er. This final er is of the same sort that ends 
John Shaksper' s name in the cut here given, repro- 
duced from p. 12. The marks in the third signature 
between the p and the er mean nothing. 



4o6 SHAKSPEiR NOT SHAKBSPBARE. 

Skottowe said, in 1826: "In regard to the signatures 
of the Will, a sort of doubt has been cast on the first 
and second by the suggestion that they might be the 
handwriting of the notary employed on the occasion. ' ' 
Which, together with what I have quoted from Drake, 
shows that generations ago the editors and com- 
mentators were puzzled by the remarkable discrepan- 
cies in these signatures. 

Drake says: "The autographs present us with five 
signatures, which, singular as it may appear, all vary, 
either in the mode of writing or mode of spelling. 
The first appears Wfu. Shakspea, the second William 
Shaksper. The three Will signatures, it is remark- 
able, differ considerably, especially in the surnames, for 
in the first we have Shackspere; in the second Shake- 
spe re; in the third Shakspeare." Drake mistook the 
German a of the first Will signature for a c. 

My own opinion is that William Shaksper never 
learned to write, and that he at no time signed his 
name. In his walk of life, the art of writing was rarely 
attained. His ancestors, in all their generations, got 
along without writing, as well as without reading. 
The Shakspers, with the rest of the nation at that time, 
were "yet struggling to escape from barbarity" as 
Dr. Johnson asserts, and during this same period, "to 
be able to read and write (outside of professed schol- 
ars, or men and women of high rank) was an accom- 
plishment still valued for its rarity." As we have 
seen, Mr. Phillipps tells us that learning to read, in 
Stratford, was a difficult matter, for the reason that 
there were few persons in that village capable of teach- 
ing a boy his letters. Had William as a boy learned 



gHAKSPSS. ]Sf:^VER t^ARNKD 0*0 WRITER. 407 

to write, as a man he would have employed but one 
alphabet, and not as many alphabets as he made sig- 
natures. Any business man will witness that a cor- 
respondent of his who sends a different signature with 
every communication, is not doing his own writing, 
but Tom, Dick, and Harry are doing it for him. 
So it was with this Shaksper. 

Now, a curious thing has happened: the nom- de- 
plume of the author of the plays was William Shake- 
speare, and no other, and he often hyphenated it Shake- 
speare, as if to emphasize the fact that Shak was no 
part of his title. The name of the player was Shak- 
sper and no other. But under an agreement entered 
into between the New Shakspere Society and the afl&li- 
ated Societies in England and America, the names 
Shakspar and Shaksper are ignored, while the name 
Shakespeare is banished from literature and history; 
and recent books talk of the poet Shakspere.* The 
effects, assets, and the name of the great Shake- 
speare have been seized feloniously, and made over to 
the strolling vagabond Shaksper, rechristened Shak- 
pere — a man unable to write his own name! There is 
no more a Shakespeare — the stroller has possession of 
both name and plunder. 

' 'Who steals my purse steals trash. . , . 

But he that filches from me my good name 
Robs me of that which not enriches him 
But makes me poor indeed." 

I think the great "Shakespeare" must have had a 



*I am -glad to see that Mr. Lee's book is an exception. 



4o8 shakspe;r Nol" shakespe^ar:^. 

prescience of the New Shakspere Society of freeboot- 
ers, when he wrote that line. 

"These five signatures are the sum total of the life 
labors of "William Shaksper which have come down to 
us. In these rude illiterate scrawls we stand face to 
face with the Stratford man. What an abyss sepa- 
rates them from the god-like plays!" Donnelly, 76. 

We have seen what William Shaksper' s neighbors 
called him, and it would be desirable to know what he 
called himself, as his wealth increased. Apparently 
he was disposed to be known as Shakespeare about 
the time he became a land owner, and made the pur- 
chase of New Place, or in 1597, though just before 
that, in the application for coat-armour of 1596, the 
father's name is spelled Shakespeare. That is the first 
that is known of Shakespeare in the family. In the 
fac-simile of "The exemplification of the Fine that 
was levied when he purchased New Place," H.-P., 
II, 106, the name is spelled Shakespeare several times. 
In the second application for coat-armour, 1699, John's 
name is always spelled Shakespere. In the Stratford 
suits William is called Shexpere, in 1604; and both 
Shakespere and Shackspere in 1608. In 1606, in the 
conveyance of a moiety of a lease, he is Shakspear. In 
16 1 2,^ in a Bill of Complaint, he is Shackspear; in the 
body of the Walker Deed and the mortgage of 1612-13, 
he is called Shakespeare; in 16 14, in the Articles of 
Agreement with Replingham, he is Shackspeare. Al- 
though "Shakespeare" is in the bod)^ of the Walker 
Deed and Mortgage, when some of his neighbors 
signed these instruments for him, the}^ got the name 
Shaksper and Shakspar; and when his friends gathered 



SHAKSPEiR ne;vb;r i.e;arned to writk. 409 

about him to help execute his last Will, they signed 
the name three times Shaksper. F'inally, the Clerk 
of Stratford Church entered his name, at his burial, 
William Shakspere, as Phillipps gives it, but probably 
the name on the record really ends with a German r 
and is therefore Shaksper. At all events to this clerk 
he died Shak. 

The ex-player seems to have sought, when he began 
to feel his oats, to slough off John Peter, but was not 
persistent in his effort. The old habits, however, were 
too strong for his neighbors, and to them he was born 
a Shaksper, lived a Shaksper, and died a Shaksper. 

Among the many forgeries relating to player Shak- 
sper is a signature in an old copy of Montaigne. Ber- 
nard Quarritch, in his Rough lyist No. 160, 1896, ad- 
vertises thus a copy of the first edition of Montaigne: — ■ 
"This is a literary monument of high value, and the 
only book of which we can say with certainty that it 
formed a part of Shakespeare's library. His copy, 
with his autograph, is in the British Museum. That 
he studied and made use of it, we have sufficient tes- 
timony," etc., etc. 

In Harper's Magazine, October, 1894, is a story by 
Thomas Nelson Page, in which we are told: "When 
I read Montaigne, I feel as if I was reading myself. 
It is a pleasure to me to know that here is the one 
book which we know absolutely Shakspere read, and 
in which he wrote his name." This statement has 
been seen by half a million persons. 

In Baynes, we should naturally look to see this story, 
and on page 94, Shakespeare Studies, he says: "The 
only known volume that certainly belonged to Shak- 



4lO SHAKlSPl^R NOT SHAKESPEARE;. 

spere and contains his autograph is Florio's version 
of Montaigne's Essays, in the British Museum." And 
up he goes, telling us who that Florio was, and that 
' 'both he and the player were intimate friends of the 
Karl of Southampton; and that it is evident from the 
plays that "William Shakspere was intimately ac- 
quainted with. Italian; that he must have made Florio's 
acquaintance soon after he came to lyondon, and prob- 
ably owes to him his knowledge of French as well as 
Italian"; that W. S., "on reaching I^ondon, and be- 
ginning to breathe a literary atmosphere" (in the 
sweet air of the theater Taine tells us of), "would 
naturally betake himself to the study of Italian," and 
so on, ad astra. 

Of this signature, Richard Grant White says: "The 
signature appears upon the title-page of a copy of the 
first edition of Montaigne's Essays, published in 1603. 
Nothing is known of the whereabouts of the volume 
previous to the year 1778, a time when the interest in 
Shakspere was so great, and the investigations of his 
personal history so recent and so imperfect that it was 
both tempting and propitious to the fabrication. . . . 
Its claims to authenticity have no support but mere 
opinion, based upon its style and general appearance, 
and its resemblance to originals of undoubted genuine- 
ness, a position which it occupies with the Felton Por- 
trait." Vol. I, cxxvii. The Felton Portrait is con- 
ceded on all sides not to have been authentic. 

Again, in England Without and Within, page 528, 
Mr. White says of this signature: "Others whose 
judgment is worth mine ten times over, think, as I do, 



SHAKSPEJR NKVB^R lv:eARNED TO WRITE. 41I 

that it is a forgery." Dowden, 39, says of this sig- 
nature: "Its genuineness has been disputed," 

Knight, in his I^ife of W. S., gives a fac-simile of 
this signature, and I have had a photographic copy of 
it made, and give it herewith: 




It needs but a glance to show the difference be- 
tween it and the five Deed and Will signatures. The 
hand that wrote this name could never have brought 
itself to write the two Deed signatures, or the second 
Will signature, or the surname of the third Will sig- 
nature. Skill in the art of writing once attained can- 
not be lost. It was the hand of an expert penman, 
no writing master more so. Note the beautiful illin, 
as perfect as copper-plate; and the easy grace with 
which each letter of the surname is dashed off. The 
>^ is a work of art, and so is the /, and the e r e _ are 
perfect, as well as separated. The forger took his W' 
from the fifth signature, but got a very imperfect like- 
ness of it; the illin from the fourth. The large ^ is 
unlike any of the five, of a different species altogether; 
the h k e r e unlike any of the five; the p something 
like the letter in the second and fifth, differing as the 
work of an expert would differ from a man unaccus- 
tomed to write. It is so palpable a forgery that the 
wonder, is how any one gave the least heed to it. 



41^ SHAKSPE^R not SHAKKSPliARE;. 

The Ireland forgeries, perpetrated near the close 
of the 1 8th century, embraced not only plays, as Vor- 
tigem and Rowena, William the Conqueror, and 
Henry II, but deeds purporting to have been made 
by "William Shakespeare (Shaksper), the forger "im- 
itating the poet's signature from a fac-simile of a gen- 
uine deed of 1612. Renewed success encouraged him 
to a perfect hailstorm of Shakespeare relics. Verses 
and letters of the poet inscribed on fly-leaves, old 
printed books with Shakespeare' s name on the title-page, 
and notes and verses in the same hand- writing on the 
margin, followed in bewildering succession." Pall 
Mall Gazette, May, 1896. As the signature in the 
Montaigne first came to light in 1778, Ireland was not 
the forger. It was by a few years too early for him; 
but his forgeries were merely a sample of what had 
been done for years in this line. All the last half of 
that century — or after the Shakespeare Jubilee, 1769 — 
Shakespeare forgery was in the air. I find a curious 
item in Ingleby bearing on this point. He intimates, 
p. 410, that Oldys amused himself in composing verses 
as written by Shakespeare, and says: "Can it be pos- 
sible that these two verses were dished up by George 
Steevens (1778), and assigned by him to Jonson 
and Shakespeare, as a hoax on his too credulous 
public?" 



ignorance; of contbjmporaries. 413 



CHAPTER XVI. 

FURTHER EVIDENCE OF THE IGNORANCE OF CON- 
TEMPORARIES RESPECTING WILIvIAM SHAKSPER. 

And so this man, the reputed author of some of the 
greatest works of intellect the world has produced, 
profoundly learned in all branches of knowledge, as 
the works themselves give evidence, disappeared, and 
no one spoke of it, or missed him. He passed away- 
like a cloud, and it was unknown or forgotten what 
manner of man he was. There is no mention of his 
retirement from London to Stratford in prose or verse 
by any writer of the time; and no one of the refer- 
ences in Ingleby or Furnivall alludes to William Shak- 
sper's death. Is it credible that a great poet could 
thus die, and no other poet lament him? Spenser 
wrote a dozen elegies and epitaphs on the death of his 
beloved Astrophel; Milton bewails his friend in the 
magnificent monody of Lycidas; but no one lifted up 
his voice on the departure of William Shaksper. 

This man's admirers claim that Jonson was his 
friend, and that Drayton was his friend, and appeal to 
the traditions that Shaksper' s death was caused by a 
"merrie meeting" of the three. If two such poets 
were his friends, assuredly there must have been others 
of the guild who felt kindly to him, and knew him in- 
timately; yet no poet, or even prose writer, uttered a 
lament for William Shaksper. Jonson was a great 
composer of elegies, epigrams, epitaphs, and sonnets, 



414 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPE^ARE. 

and a vast collection of them form part of his pub- 
lished works. Apparently he wrote verses on or about 
every man or woman he knew. But when William 
Shaksper died, and indeed during the man's life, Jon- 
son was significantly silent. 

Where were ye, Po'ts, when the remorseless deep 
Closed o'er the head of your loved Shackysper? 

Plainly, this man was known as a player and theater- 
proprietor, and the writers of the day never thought 
of attributing the plays and poems which had been 
published in the name of "William Shakespeare" to 
him. 

"Not a single fact bearing on his literary character 
has come down to us. Kmerson says he examined 
with great care the entire correspondence of Sir Henry 
Wotton, in which almost every one of note in that 
day was mentioned, and Shakespeare's name is con- 
spicuously absent. Halliwell-Phillipps says that in a 
long series of letters from John Chamberlain to Dudley 
Carleton, scattered over the whole period from 1598 to 
1623, letters full of the news of the month, of the court, 
the caty, the pulpit, the booksellers shops, in which 
court masques are described in minute detail, authors, 
actors, plot, performance, reception and all, we look in 
vain for the name of Shakespeare or any of his plays. ' ' 
V. R. , in Boston Transcript, 6th November, 1897. 

"Of his eminent countrymen, Raleigh, Sidney, Spen- 
ser, Bacon, Cecil, Walsingham, Coke, Camden, Hooker, 
Drake, Hobbes, Inigo Jones, Herbert of Cherbury, 
Laud, Pym, Hampden, Wotton and Donne, may be 
properly reckoned as his contemporaries, and yet there 



ignorance; op contemporaries. 415 

is no proof whatever that he was personally known to 
either of these men, or to any of less note among the 
statesmen, scholars, and artists of his day, except the 
few of his fellow-craftsmen, whose acquaintance with 
him has been heretofore mentioned." R. G. White, 
185, "Since the constellation of great men who ap- 
peared in Greece in the time of Pericles, there never 
was any such society, yet their genius failed them to 
find out the best head in the universe." Kmerson, 
Rep. Men. 

' 'As to Beaumont, Fletcher, Webster, etc. , who after 
1 6 10 wrote for the King's men, and the numerous con- 
temporaries who wrote for other companies, no trace 
• of any intercourse with Shakespeare, personal or oth- 
erwise, remains to us, though abundant guesses and 
hypotheses utterly foundationless will be found in the 
voluminous Shakespeare literature already existing. ' ' 
Fleay, Life, 81. 

"Allusions to his works . . . will be found 
collected in Dr. Ingleby's Centurie of Prayse; but 
they consist almost entirely of slight references to his 
published works, and have no bearing or importance 
on his career. . . . Neither as addressed to him 
by others, nor to others by him, do any commendatory 
verses exist in connection with any of his or other 
men's works published in his lifetime — a notable fact, 
in whatever way it may be explained. Nor can he be 
traced beyond a very limited circle, although the fan- 
ciful might-have-beens so largely indulged in by his 
biographers might at first lead us to an opposite con- 
clusion." Id. 73. 

"F-rom early manhood to maturity, he lived and la- 



4l6 SHAKSPE^R NOT SHAKKSPEJARBJ. 

boured and throve, in the chief city of a prosperous and 
peaceful country" (a city of 160,000 population, which 
is that of Denver, in 1900), "at a period of high in- 
tellectual and moral development. His life was passed 
before the public in the days when the pen recorded 
scandal in the diary, and when the press, though the 
daily newspaper did not exist, teemed with personal- 
ity. Yet hardly a word that he spoke has reached us, 
and not a familiar line from his hand, or the record of 
one interview at which he was present. " R. G. White, 
lyife, 4. Whatever word has reached us has to do 
with business affairs, not literature. 

"There are few periods, at which intellectual activ- 
ity was as great as it is now, with its written records 
surviving, in which the passions, the opinions, the am- 
bitions of the age are all before us." . . , Such 
a period was that which embraced the years of William 
Shaksper's life in London, and yet there is not one 
word of him or from him or about him, in the written 
records of that time. It is as if the man had never 
lived. 

There has been no scrap of writing from or to him 
(except one letter, before spoken of, asking him for a 
loan of money), no record of any dinner or festival at 
which he met any of his associates. No report of a 
word spoken by him on any occasion or any subject, 
except the two conversations held with the town clerk 
of Stratford on the enclosure of the common land, 
which I have given in Chapter VIII. ' 'The letters 
which have come down to us from that period would 
fill a large library, but in no one of them is there any 
reference to the actor Shakspere. In the greatest age 



ignorance: of contsmporariks. 417 

of English literature, the greatest man of his species 
lived in London for nearly thirty years, and no one 
takes any notice of his presence. The proposition is 
incredible that a man should be able to produce the 
greatest, profoundest, broadest of composition — works 
overflowing with evidence of vast industry and uni- 
versal scholarship — and yet leave behind him, apart 
from the writings in controversy, not a thought, a 
word, a scrap of writing, a letter, a fragment of the 
manuscript of a play, or anything else, except three 
signatures to his Will, and two to legal conveyances." 
Donnelly. 

Yet, Mrs. Dall tells us, p. 182: "It is certain that 
he was idolized by the people, sought by the nobility, 
petted by the court, and admired by both Elizabeth 
and James. . . , Pembroke, Rutland, and Mont- 
gomery, as well as Southampton, were his friends. . . . 
Shakspere shows in his plays that he sprang from the 
people; he cared for the people, their liberties, their 
rights, and their interests. Perhaps he had at first 
some desire to take a practical part in politics, but the 
death of Essex" (assumed to be a friend of W. S. 
also) "made this impossible, and never after Essex 
died, could a man of his upright dealing and tender 
heart have clasped hands with Lord Bacon. 
After this" (desertion of Essex by Bacon) "any in- 
timacy with Shakspere would have been impossible". 

This is an astounding string of unwarranted asser- 
tions. There is not the least authentic evidence that 
he was known otherwise than as a player or pro- 
prietor of a theater to any person of distinction what- 
ever; and Grant White expressly assures of that fact. 



41 8 SHAKSPSR NOT SHAKBJSPEAR:^. 

Nor is there the least evidence that any man of dis- 
tinction ever spoke to him. The idea of player Shak- 
sper having some desire to take a practical part in 
politics, and being deterred by the death of that arch 
traitor, Essex, is rich. Also, p. i6i: "Many things 
united to destroy the respect of such a man as Shak- 
spere for the Queen' ' . Elizabeth, whose life made the 
England of to-day possible — the object of veneration 
to every right thinking Englishman or Anglo-Ameri- 
can; that Queen Elizabeth of famous memory, as 
Oliver Cromwell styled her, and "that great Queen". 
And this Shaksper, whom Mrs. Dall so belauds, is he 
of the Droeshout likeness! 

[Per contra, R. G. White says, in the Genius of 
Shakespeare: "It has been objected to the assertion 
of the amplitude of Shakespeare's mind, and to the 
generosity of his character, that he always represents 
the laborer and the artisan in a degraded position, and 
often makes his ignorance and uncouthness the butt of 
ridicule. ' ' There is not a line in the plays which in- 
dicates that their author sprang from the people or 
cared for the people, their rights or their interests. 
As Morgan says: "The author of the plays was a 
constitutional aristocrat, who believed in the estab- 
lished order of things, and wasted not one word of 
eulogy upon any human right in his day not absolutely 
guaranteed by charters or by thrones. " "Coriolanus 
seems to have been written to create a wall and barrier 
of public opinion against the movement toward popu- 
lar government which not long after his death plunged 
England into a long and bloody civil war. The whole 



ignorance; of cont:smporarie;s. 419 

argument of the play is the unfitness of a mob to 
govern a state. ' ' Donnelly. 

Swinburne says: "With him the people risen in re- 
volt, for any just or unjust cause, is always the mob, 
the unwashed rabble, the swinish multitude. ' ' Study 
of Shakespeare, 54. 

"Nor have we found in going through these four- 
teen comedies, one generous aspiration in favor of 
popular liberty; nor one expression of sympathy with 
the sufferings of the poor; nay, hardly one worthy 
sentiment accorded to a character in humble life." 
Wilkes, 171.] 

"There is not even a line or word to show the con- 
nection of William Shaksper with any printer or pub- 
lisher. No entry of any description shows him as 
either paying or receiving any sum of money on ac- 
count of works printed". Mrs. Potts, 54. 

It is now many years since the Diary of Manager 
Henslowe (i 592-1603) was found. Fleay, Hist., 
copies a large part of it, and says: "The extreme 
importance of this well-known work . . . will, 
I think, justify the space allotted to this abstract 
of all that is of general utility in the old pawn- 
broking, stage-managing, bear-baiting usurer's MSS"; 
and he devotes twenty pages to it. The name of 
nearly every play-wright of the period occurs, most 
often repeatedly, in these leaves, with the sums of 
money paid them for plays or altering plays. We 
have Jonson, Haughton, Monday, Drayton, Dekker, 
Chettle, Wilson, Hathaway, Chapman, Porter, Day, 
Rankins, Marston, Boyle, Wadeson, Smith, Rowley, 
Middleton, Bird, Heywood, Webster. But there is 



420 SHAKSPKR NOT shak:^spb;are;. 

no mention of Shaksper, or Shakespeare, under any- 
spelling. To this day it remains a matter for wonder 
why Henslowe never mentioned Shaksper, the greatest 
play-wright of that age, if he wrote the Shakespeare 
plays, while he spoke of all other men who wrote 
plays. Phillipps says that, up to 1594, ' 'all his (Shake- 
speare's) dramas were written for Henslowe." He 
attributes the selection of such a subject as Titus 
Andronicus for a play to Henslowe, influenced by the 
current taste of the public for the horrible. Other 
commentators, influenced perhaps by the absence of 
mention of Shakespeare in the Diary, doubt or deny 
that there was any connection between the parties. 

' 'We are asked to believe that the greatest man that 
ever walked this planet — profound, immense in all his 
attributes — lived in this town of I^ondon, and in the 
village of Stratford, until he was 52 years of age, and 
yet not a man comes forward and says: — 'Here is a 
letter from William Shakespere! Here is where he 
wrote Spenser and discussed poetry! Here is where 
he wrote Bacon and discussed philosophy! Here is an 
account of a public meeting in which he took part!' 
What was he doing ? Can you put such a light as 
that under a bushel ? No ! Its effulgence would fill 
the world, and the activities, the mental power, of 
such a man would have expanded and radiated in a 
thousand directions. ' ' Donnelly. 

In after years, and during that century, antiquarians 
searched Stratford and the neighborhood for memories 
of the man. All that they could find I have related; 
that he was a wild youth, a butcher's apprentice, got 
into trouble with the lyucys, and fled to lyondon; be- 



ignorance; of conte;mporarie;s. 421 

came a player, and that of no note whatever; rose to 
be part- proprietor of the theater, returned to Stratford 
a rich man; and died of a fever, the consequence of a 
drunken spree. That was all. There was abundant 
information as to his money transactions, but not a 
shred as to any literary work, or as to his authorship 
of poems and plays. Dowden says that "the facts 
which we possess are enough to assures us that the 
greatest of poets conducted his material life wisely 
and to a prosperous issue. They are enough to prove 
his good sense and discreet dealings in worldly affairs. ' ' 
Plenty of proof indeed as to material prosperity, but 
none to connect him with the Shakespeare plays. 

"What we do learn, and that from his biographer 
and admirer, Halliwell-Phillipps, is that he was a 
money-lender, who would have his pound of flesh at 
all hazards, and a keen man of business, who kept the 
main chance always before him." T. W. White, 190. 

Malone expressed his astonishment that "almost a 
century should have elapsed from the death of William 
Shakspere without a single attempt having been made 
to discover any circumstance which should throw 
a light on the history of his life or literary career." 

Ex nihilo nihil fit is a very old proverb; the fact was 
there was nothing respecting the literary career of 
player Shaksper to be discovered. His great achieve- 
ment had been making money, and there was no limit 
to the gossip and tradition as to that. But when it 
came to literary work, nothing was found because 
there was nothing to find. "The earliest recorded 
traditions at present known are those imbedded in a 
closely written memorandum book compiled in the 



422 SHAKSPEJR NOT SHAKKSPEARE. 

year 1662, by Rev. John A. Ward, M.A., of Oxford, 
and Vicar of Stratford-on- Avon.* , . . There can 
be no doubt that he has accurately repeated the preva- 
lent local gossip in the few entries respecting the great 
dramatist." H.-P., Preface, X. At the time of Mr. 
Ward's writing, some of the then residents of Strat- 
ford must have known the player personally. Prob- 
ably some were living who remembered the boy, and 
certainly there were many who knew the man after he 
came back to Stratford to spend the remainder of his 
days there. Mr. Ward recorded that he had "heard 
that Mr. Shakspere was a natural wit without any art 
at all". That is, without learning or cultivation, 
uneducated — a natural genius and nothing more, and 
this suits William Shaksper exactly. "That he fre- 
quented the plays in all his younger time, but in his 
older days lived at Stratford, and supplied the stage 

*[From New York Tribune, (semi-weekly) nth Nov., 1898. 
— (From the lyondon Telegraph).] "The work of the 126th 
session of the Medical Society of Ivondon was begun, at the 
rooms of the Society, in Chandos St., by a short introductory 
address from the president, Bdmund Owen, Surgeon to St. 
Mary's Hospital, who remarked that among the many treasures 
of their library were fifteen volumes of manuscript, which 
formed the diary or common-place book of the Rev. John Ward, 
M.A., Oxon, who was Vicar of Stratford-on-Avon from 1662 to 
16S1. . . . He had worked diligently to acquire a knowl- 
edge of the medical profession, etc. . . . On taking up his 
work at Stratford-on-Avon, in the forty-sixth year after Shak- 
sper's death, Ward must, both as Vicar and Doctor, have 
been told of many facts concerning the bard by those who had 
been intimately acquainted with him. Unfortunately, he did 
not record much about him in these memorandum-books; what 
he did say," etc. (is what I have quoted from H.-P. above). 



ignorance; of cont:hmporari:^S. 423 

with two plays every year. . . ." He tells the 
story of Shaksper's "merrie meeting, and it seems 
drank too hard", for he "died of a fever there con- 
tracted". Very little surely to have been gleaned by 
a clergyman in the dead man's own parish, if there 
had been anything to glean. It is noticeable that Mr. 
Ward's entry was made in 1662, the year he came to 
Stratford. He lived there eighteen years after 1662, 
but never found more of Shaksper worth recording. 
As to Shaksper's supplying the stage with two plays 
every year, we have seen that Mr. Phillipps asserts 
that all the facts point to the conclusion that William 
Shaksper engaged in no literary work after he retired 
from the stage, which was in 1610-11. Nevertheless 
Green, in his History of England, tells this story of 
two plays per year as if it were a fact which he had 
verified. 

In 1693, the Rev. Mr. Dowdall questioned the clerk 
of the parish (of whom I have before spoken), a man 
over eighty years of age, born before the death of the 
player. Of course this clerk, a man of intelligence 
and respectability, had known and grown up with men 
and women by hundreds who had personally known 
the player, and who knew and could recite all the cur- 
rent gossip about him; and there would be a great 
store of this, for the rich man who went to lyondon a 
penniless fugitive was the I^ord Mayor Whittington over 
again. But all he could tell Mr. Dowdall was, that 
"this Shakspere was formerly of this town, bound ap- 
prentice to a butcher. But he ran away from his 
master to I^ondon, and was there received into the 
play house as a servitour, and by this means had an 



424 SHAKSPSR NOT SHAK:SSPB;ARK. 

opportunity to be what he afterwards proved." Here 
was a clergyman anxiously questioning the parish clerk 
of Stratford, as to the knowledge and traditions respect- 
ing William Shaksper, formerly of that parish, reputed 
to have written certain wonderful poems and plays, and 
not one item does he extract as to literary labors, or 
traditions of authorship. Simply that the runaway 
boy came back a rich man ! Nothing more impresses 
the illiterate than the reputation of authorship. To 
have written a book sets all agape. But neither 
clerk nor neighbors had ever heard of his writing 
plays. 

Not one of the player's family, it appears, had any- 
thing to say of poems or plays. His son-in-law, John 
Hall, was a Master of Arts, and an eminent physician. 
"His advice was solicited in every direction, and he 
was summoned more than once to attend the Barl and 
Countess of Northampton, at Ludlow Castle, a dis- 
tance of over forty miles, no trifling journey over the 
bridle paths of those days; and even in such times of 
fierce religious animosities the desire to secure his 
advice outweighed them all," etc, (H.-P., II, 274.) 

Dr. Hall left a manuscript entitled * 'Select observa- 
tions on English bodies' ' , and the only line relating to 
William Shaksper is this: "My father-in-law, W. 
Shakspeare died last Thursday. ' ' Of this the Boston 
Transcript, 13th Oct. 1897, said: — "Dr. Hall feelingly 
put down the treatment of Goodman Brown, and Gos- 
sip Wickerley, and the elderly I^ady Butler, the herbs 
and simples used, etc, and on one line, as if an after- 
thought, he adds, ' ' the words given above. 

Dr. Nathan Drake, himself a physician, says, Pt, 



IGNORANCK OF CONTFMPORARIKS. 425 

III, Ch. 2: "That not the smallest account of the dis- 
ease which terminated so valuable a life, should have 
been transmitted to posterity is . . . singular; 
and the more so, as our poet was, no doubt, attended 
by his son-in-law, Dr. Hall, who should have recol- 
lected that the circumstances which led to the dissolu- 
tion of such a man had a claim to preservation and 
publicity. Hall, who left for publication a manu- 
script collection of cases, selected from not less than 
a thousand diseases, has omitted the only one which 
could have secured to his work any permanent interest 
of value. ' ' The fact no doubt was that Dr. Hall was 
ashamed of the tippling old showman whom the fates 
had assigned to him for a father-in-law. He would 
have been a happier man, could he have taken Susanna 
without the incumbrance. It is inconceivable, had 
Shaksper been known to the learned and eminent 
physician as the author of meritorious poems and 
plays — as anything beyond a mere theater man — that 
among his many memoranda, there should not be the 
slighest allusion to his so near relative. He evidently 
did not consider Shaksper' s life so valuable as Dr. 
Drake held it to have been. lyittle could Dr. Hall 
have foreseen that in the 19th century, this old man 
would be held up as a model of all that is good and 
great; that there should come to be a Shaksper cult, 
with its millions of followers, and with balloon-topped 
antiquarians like Phillipps and Kurnivall, for hiero- 
phants. 

Shaksper' s daughters knew no more than the neigh- 
bors. They had not a manuscript or a letter from 
him, or a scrap of paper on which he had written, 



426 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPKAR:^. 

nor had they a book containing a Shakespeare play. 
These daughters Hved nearly forty years after 
their father's death — his grand-daughter, I^ady Bar- 
nard, till 1670, — and there is not the slightest evi- 
dence that they ever claimed literary distinction for 
"William Shaksper. I^ady Barnard may be assumed to 
have been intelligent as well as educated, and she 
would have been proud of her ancestor, if he was 
really the great poet Shakespeare. 

Now, is it probable, is it possible, that the greatest 
intellect, and one of the most prolific writers of that 
age, lived and died in that way; leaving at the time 
of his death, in his own house at Stratford, nothing 
to connect him with any literary work, any author- 
ship of books or plays; his own children ignorant of 
the existence of either books or plays, they as well as 
the neighbors, knowing him simply as a player who 
had run a theater and made money? There is but 
one explanation of the matter, and that is that the 
man Shaksper, if he claimed to have written the 
Shakespeare plays, was an impostor. He had no 
more to do with their composition than had Burbage 
or Heminge, his fellows. He was proprietor of a 
theater, and like the late Barnum, he made it pay. 
He gave his mind, and all of it, to it. It could not 
have been otherwise. Shaksper must have done as 
all managers do, worked early and late at his profes- 
sion! All the extra time he had was devoted to in- 
creasing his heap of money. Certainly this was so, 
for from mean beginnings, by small accretions, and by 
lending money and fortunate speculations, he became 
a very rich man. Not one moment had he for writ- 



ignorance; op contkhporariks. 427 

ing plays, and every presumption is against his hav- 
ing the incHnatiou, any more than the ability, to write 
plays; certainly not the Shakespeare plays. Acting 
and managing was one trade, writing of plays an- 
other. 

And yet, we are asked to believe that this busy, 
and thriving and far-traveling man, also undertook, 
and for twenty years carried on the trade of, writing 
the plays acted at his theater, and very many plays 
never acted there or elsewhere — thrown off in mere 
sport, because he had not enough to do, we may say; 
wonderful plays, the like of which, for solid learning, 
book-lore, philosophy — only to be got by 3^ears of 
continual brain work — the world has not seen. And 
more than that, after many of these plays had been 
written and published, this busy man re- wrote them, 
altered, enlarged and polished them, "with an eye to 
their literary perfection", Swinburne says. Our ad- 
mirable Barnum, who belonged to the same genus as 
William Shaksper, could ride one horse, possibly two, 
but he hardly could have ridden half a dozen without 
coming to grief. No more could manager Shaksper, 
we may be sure. Nevertheless, there are people so 
constructed that anything superhuman, miraculous, 
seizes upon their imagination and enforces their belief 
at once. They say with TertuUian: "It is incredible 
and therefore I believe it. ' ' Professor Francis W. New- 
man, Echo, Dec. 31st, 1887, says: "Are the devotees 
of Shakspere resolved to make him a miracle' ' ? That 
is exactly what they do. 

The writer of a paper on Shaksper in the Review 
of Reviews, July, 1894, says: "Any suggestion that 



428 SHAKSP^R NOT SHAKKSPEJAR:^. 

Shakspere was fallible seems to many of us akin to 
blasphemy." 

"Nobody believes tkat immediate inspiration is pos- 
sible in modern times — and yet everybody seems to 
take it for granted of this one man Shakspere, ' ' I^owell. 
Surely, because everybody realizes that on the theory 
of immediate inspiration only, can this Stratford man 
be brought into line with the Shakespeare plays. We 
have seen that Halliwell-Phillipps intimates his be- 
lief that they were written "by inspiration, not by 
design". 

Very few intelligent men and women know the facts 
in this case, and many who do know, refuse to consider 
them. It titillates the individual and the national 
vanity that the superhuman, semi-divine being, the 
accepted Shakespeare, as constructed from the plays ^ the 
like of whom never was on sea or land, should have 
been providentially permitted to the English race. It 
seems a sacrilege to pull down one's idol. For myself, 
I am of the opinion that when the author or authors 
of these works are discovered, they will be found, not 
divine, but very human, with varied experiences, with 
parentage, and education, and capacity, and training, 
to make such works possible. 

"The only real argument in favor of Shaksper is 
founded on what may be called the universality of 
belief in Great Britain and America; as if universality 
of belief will consecrate a lie. The world believes that 
William Shaksper wrote the plays and poems, and it 
is fashionable and customary so to believe. Com- 
mentators and essayists by the hundreds have kept 
the gilded idol in a state of preservation for nearly 



icJNORANc:^ or conte;mj>orAri:^S. 4^9 

three centuries by ingenious suppositions, possibilities 
and probabilities;* and when doubters grumbled on 
account of the paucity of facts, bold forgeries like 
those of Ireland and Cunningham have been put upon 
the market to minister to a popular mind diseased. ' ' 
Judge Stotsenburg, Baconiana, n. s., p. 47. 

*'Tossibilities and probabilities". I find a pretty example 
in Dr. Furnesses Variorum edition of the Tempest: "// is 
highly probable that Shakespeare derived his material from 
William Strachey, the Secretary to the Colony of Virginia, 
This Strachey printed a pamphlet in 1612 giving an account of 
'the wracks and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates Knight upon 
and from the islands of the Bermudas.' ... In recent 
times a closer possible connection has been discovered between 
this Strachey and Shakespeare than was known to M alone. 
Prefaced to one of Strachey's pamphlets on the Colony of Vir- 
ginia Britanica, dated London, 1612, in a sonnet addressed to 
the 'Council of Virginea', followed by a Preface which is signed 
'From my lodging in the black .Friers, Wm. Strachey.' " To 
these facts we can apply the universal solvent which subdues 
everything connected with Shakespeare'' s biography, and say 
that it is not iinprobable that Shakespeare and Strachey were 
intimate friends and it is not improbable that of all tnen it was 
Strachey whom, full of adventure, of shipwrecks, of tempests, 
of travellers' stories, Shakespeare ''got quietly in the corner 
and milked.'''' 



430 SHAKSPI^R NOT SHAKi^SPl^ARB. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

ABSENCE OF AlylyUSIONS TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
IN THE SHAKESPEARE PlyAYS: THE AUTHOR OR 
AUTHORS STRANGEI/Y UNOBSERVANT OF NATURE. 

Dr. Wallace, in the "Arena", thus discourses: "In 
the midst of the calm and beautiful scenery of "War- 
wickshire, he acquired that extensive knowledge and 
love of nature . . . which is manifest throughout 
his works," etc. 

William Winter says: "The minute knowledge that 
Shakespeare has of plants and flowers, and the loving 
appreciation with which he describes pastoral scenery, 
are explained to the rambler in Stratford by all he 
sees and hears." And again: "The man who wrote 
the Shakespeare plays knew Warwickshire as it could 
only be known to a native of it." I have before 
quoted Halliwell-Phillipps on the flower mentions, 
"that they do not prove that he was ever a botanist or 
a gardener. Neither are his numerous allusions to 
wild flowers and plants, not one of which appears to 
be peculiar to Warwickshire, evidences." Which 
would seem to settle that matter. But it is a fact that 
the works of William Shakespeare, supposed to have 
been written by one William Shaksper, born in the 
village of Stratford, on the river Avon, Warwickshire, 
are not only remarkable for the very opposite of an 
"extensive knowledge of nature", obtained in the 
mid^ of that "calm and beautiful scenery", but for 



NO AtlvUSIONS 'fO SYRATP^ORD-ON-AVON. 43 1 

the absence of mentions of or allusions to Stratford, 
or the Avon, or the county of "Warwick, to whose 
beauties he is supposed to have owed his inspiration. 

In all the poems and plays attributed to "Shake- 
speare", there is not a mention of Stratford, or of the 
Avon. Of the county of Warwick there are just three 
mentions: — "What a devil dost thou in Warwick- 
shire?" I Henry IV, v,»2. In 2 Henry VI, iii, 2, 
Suffolk, addressing Warwick, says: "Proud lord of 
Warwickshire"; and in 3 Henry VI, iv, 8, Barl War- 
wick says: "In Warwickshire I have true-hearted 
friends." The action of the three Henry VI plays 
and of Richard III takes place largely in Warwick- 
shire, and Karl Warwick is one of the prominent 
characters, mentioned by name a hundred times, yet 
these three mentions of the county are all that are to 
be found in the thirty-six plays, and not one of them 
implies a personal knowledge of the county. 

Nor are other localities named. It is possible that 
Wincot, in the Introduction to Marlowe's Taming of 
the Shrew, may have been meant for Wilmecote, a 
village three miles from Stratford-on-Avon, but there 
is nothing by which to identify it, and what Wincot 
was, no man can now tell. 

"There is a Woncot mentioned in 2 Henry VI, 
'William Visor of Woncot', and so eager have the 
Shakspereans been to sustain the Warwickshire 
origin of the plays, that they have converted this into 
Wincot. As, however. Master Robert Shallow Esquire 
dwelt in Gloucestershire, ('I'll through Gloucester- 
shire, and there will I visit Robert Shallow Esquire' ) , 
and William Visor was one of his tenants or under- 



43^ ShAKSPI^R NO^ SHAKKSPEiAR]^. 

lings, this Woncot could not have been Wincot." 
Donnelly. 

The town of Coventry is mentioned nine times, but 
nowhere is there discovered a personal acquaintance 
with it: "Towards Coventry we bend our course"; 
"I '11 not march through Coventry"; "March amain 
towards Co ventrj'^" ; and so on. The name Coventry 
carries no more meaning than does Xanadu in the line 
of Coleridge. Any other name would have done as 
well. 

The forest of Arden is spoken of three times in As 
You lyike It; "This is the forest of Arden"; "In the 
forest of Arden"; "My uncle in the forest of Arden"; 
but it is not an English forest. It is a piece of the 
land of Nowhere, a wilderness furnished with lions 
and green pythons; where the ruler is a Duke and the 
courtiers are Frenchmen. This forest has no more lo- 
cality or reality than the Wonderland of Alice. 

William Winter says that the man who wrote the 
Shakespeare plays knew Warwickshire as it could 
only have been known to a native of it. From what 
I have said above, it is clear that this man did not 
manifest in his plays any knowledge of Warwickshire 
at all. 

Drake, Ch. Ill, after speaking of Wincot, dis- 
courses thus: "It may indeed excite some surprise 
that we have not more allusions of this nature to com- 
memorate; that the scenery which occurred to him 
early in life, and especially at the period when the 
imagery drawn from nature must have been impressed 
on his mind in a manner peculiarly vivid and defined; 
when he was free from care, unshackled by a family, 



NO ALLUSIONS TO STRATPORD-ON-AVON. 433 

and at liberty to roam where fancy led him, has not 
been delineated in some portion of his works, with 
such accuracy as immediately to designate its origin. 
For, if we consider the excursive powers of his 
imagination, and the desultory and unsettled habits 
which tradition has ascribed to him during his youth- 
ful residence at Stratford, we may assert, without fear 
of contradiction, and as an undoubted truth, that his 
rambles into the country, and for a poet's purpose, 
were both frequent and extensive, and that not a 
stream, or wood, or hamlet, within many miles of his 
native town, were un visited by him at various times 
and under various circumstances. Yet, if we can 
seldom point out in his works any distinct reference to 
the actual scenery of Stratford and its neighborhood, 
we may observe that few of the remarkable events of 
his own time appear to have escaped his notice," etc. 
To illustrate this, Dr. Drake prattles about an earth- 
quake which happened in 1580, alluded to, he thinks, 
by the nurse in Romeo and Juliet. It is probable that 
the earthquake was not confined to Henley street. 

Surely, it is strange, if the author of the Plays 
spent his first twenty-two years at Stratford-on-Avon, 
that no mention of that neighborhood is to be found 
in all his writings, not merely of the neighborhood, 
but of the objects that a boy and youth with eyes in 
his head must have seen, and with brains must have 
reflected on. I will quote on this matter the writer in 
the lyondou Quarterly Review before cited. His name 
is not attached to the paper, but the presence of the 
latter in the Quarterly is a voucher for his accuracy 
and authority. He tells us that "Shakespeare was 



434 SHAKSPKR NOT shakkspbjare;. 

curiously unobservant of animated nature. He 
seems to have seen very little. Our authority for this 
is his own works, which . . . are most disap- 
pointing to lovers of Nature by their extraordi- 
nary omissions. Stratford-on-Avon was enmeshed in 
streams, yet he has not got a single king-fisher. It is 
true he refers to that mythic old sea-bird of antiquity, 
the halcyon, but that is not a king-fisher. Nor in all 
his streams or pool is there an otter, a water-rat, a fish 
rising, a dragon-fly, a moor hen or a heron. His boy- 
hood was passed among woods, and yet in all the 
woods in his plays there is neither wood-pecker nor 
wood-pigeon; we never see or hear a squirrel in the 
trees, nor a night- jar hawking over the bracken. How 
is it that in all his sunshine there is not a single bee 
humming about the flowers? That with all his even- 
ings, there is not a single moth on the wing? Shake- 
speare makes use of no fewer than twenty species of 
British wild animals. Of these, the badger, the otter 
and the water-rat are once each employed by name 
merely as terms of abuse; the pole-cat and hedge hog 
are also terms of abuse, but are so far described, as to 
be called respectively 'stinking' and 'thorny'; the 
dormouse and ferret are each used once as adjectives 
for 'sleepy' and 'fierce' ; the shrew gives its name to a 
play, but is never mentioned as an animal. . . The 
only references to the weasel are blunders. . . . 
There is not even a single epithet in all his references 
to the fox that assures us that Shakespeare ever noticed 
one at large. . . He gives a superb description of 
a boar-hunt in Venus and Adonis. Any one who 
chooses to do so could resolve this description into 



NO AI,I.USIONS YO SI'RA'l'li^ORD-ON-AVON. 435 

its original elements, and refer them respectively to 
Spenser and Drayton, Du Bartas, Cliester and others, 
who wrote of the mighty boar before Shakespeare, 
and all of whom borrowed from Ovid, Pliny and 
Virgil." Id., 334. "Another passage of which much 
has been made is the description in Henry V of a 
bee-hive and its inmates. ... As poetry it is a 
most beautiful passage; as a description of a hive, it 
is utter nonsense, with an error of fact in every other 
line, and instinct throughout with a total misconcep- 
tion of the great bee-parable. Obviously, therefore, 
there could have been no personal observation. How 
then did the poet arrive at the beautiful conception ? 
From the Euphues of Lyly. Was it original in I^yly ? 
No; for any one who will turn to the fourth book of 
the Georgics will find there Virgil's matchless de- 
scription of a bee-hive; and if Shakespeare had, in 
his own matchless language, directly paraphrased the 
Latin poet's beautiful version, his description would 
have gained greatly in accuracy, and lost but little in 
originality." Id. 348. 

"His nightingale, again, is a beautiful poem, but 
its theme is 'Philomela', not a bird; and when he does 
speak of the bird, he shows that he went to con- 
temporary error or antiquated fancy for his facts, not 
Nature. . . . Did Shakespeare ever listen to 
either lark or nightingale ? . . . The man Shake- 
speare never speaks to us from the poet's lines to say 
that the bird nightingale delighted him". Id. 358. 
His vocabulary of dog abuse is positively terrific. It 
is a most surprising fact that Shakespeare should 
never have a loving word to throw at a dog. If he 



436 SHAKSPE^R NOT SHAKEJSPEJAREJ. 

was ungenerous to a dog, he must be called sometliing 
worse to cats. . . . It is surely astonishing that 
he should so persistently revile the little animal. 
Critics cannot say of Shakspeare that he was 
a lover of animals." . . . "To the living objects 
about him he seems to have been obstinately and de- 
liberately purblind and half deaf." 

' 'As real trees that he knows of, he actually uses in 
his forests only the oak, pine and (very doubtfully) 
the sycamore. There are no elms or beech-trees, no 
birch, chestnut, walnut, poplar, alder, plane, fir, larch, 
lime or horn -beam. Is this not extraordinary ? . . . 
He has no butterflies in his sunshine, no moths in his 
twilight, no crickets in his meadows, no bees in his 
flowers, . . . His characters live in Arden Forest, 
and yet they never hear or see a single bird, or insect, 
all the time they are there. As for animals, deer ex- 
cepted, there is only a lioness and a green and gilded 
snake. The oak is the only forest tree in the play. 
There is not a flower in it. ' ' Id. 360. 

Now what is the natural inference from all this ? 
Plainly, that the author of the poems and plays had 
not spent his first twenty years in the midst of the 
calm and beautiful scenery of Warwickshire, but was 
town bred, and got his natural history from books. 
And of course it follows that boy Shakespeare and boy 
Shaksper were different boys. 

Mrs. Pott says: "It might naturally be expected 
that a man born and bred in the country (such a man 
as William Shakspere, if he were the author of the 
poems and plays,) would have given some kind of 
description of, or scene in, a country town or village. 



NO AlvI^USIONS TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 437 

a village green with rustic dancing, may- 
pole, etc. , or a smithy, a country inn, fair, or market; 
but there are none of these. Neither is there a 
harvest home, a haymaking, or Christmas merry- 
making, nor any of the small pleasures of country 
hfe. There is no brewing, cider-making, nor baking, 
no fruit or hop-picking, no reaping, gleaning or 
threshing; no scene in a farm or country gentleman's 
house, no description of homely occupations, nor of 
any kind of trade. It might naturally be expected 
that the father of a family, as was William Shakspere, 
would have much to say of children; but these are 
conspicuously absent." 

But if the man who wrote these plays was a phi- 
losopher first and then a poet, and if the plays "are 
not nature, nor copies of nature, nor intended to be 
such, but art, which makes its own world, in imitation 
no doubt of nature, but with an intentional difference 
and under artificial forms and arbitrary conditions, ' ' 
as Mr. Ruggles asserts, then it matters nothing 
whether lionesses and green and gilded snakes were 
in the forest of Arden, or a sea-coast to Bohemia. It 
is a fair inference that the artist never spent his boy- 
hood at Stratford. 



438 shakspe;r not shake;spEARK. 

CHAPTER XVIIL 

VIEWS OF THE BAYNES SCHOOL. 

Dr. Baynes is obliged to cast aside all the traditions 
respecting the youth of Shaksper, because he finds 
him in I,ondon, when but lately arrived from Strat- 
ford, learned and accomplished. Hence he must have 
had superior advantages when young. But as the 
life of boy and man is a blank, all the traditions are 
worthless, and the Doctor sets himself down to com- 
pose from the poems and plays the sort of man their 
author must have been, "by the evidence of the works 
themselves." In the first place, there must have been 
good birth and breeding, for undoubtedly the author 
was a gentleman. Therefore we will give him a dis- 
tinguished ancestry. The Doctor deems it more than 
probable, almost certain, that the name Shakespeare 
(Dr. Baynes will not have Shakspere — which sounds 
too much like Jacques- Pierre) was the result of 
prowess in the wars of the 13th century, (time of 
Kdward I; as well have said the nth century, and 
bring in the imaginary ancestor with the battle of 
Hastings — one is as easily imagined as the other). 
On the mother's side, he goes back of Edward the 
Confessor; "a gentlewoman in the truest sense of the 
term", "the sweetest of influences in the boy's child- 
hood." Now, this is a descent something like — 
worthy, in fact, of the poems and plays. True, the 
facts are that the father was an obscure yeoman, and 



vib;ws of THE) bayne;s schooi.. 439 

Lis mother of the rank of milkmaid — but we will 
have none of them. And he imagines a school at 
Stratford scarcely second to Oxford, a school that 
turned out young gentlemen with a greater knowledge 
of lyatin than any graduate of any college or uni- 
versity in America to-day possesses; a boy Shaks- 
per passionately devoted to Ovid, (the Venus and 
Adonis proves that); able to read for his own instruc- 
tion and delight, Virgil, Terence, Plautus, Catullus, 
and Cicero; but of the lot, Ovid was a special favor- 
ite with Shaksper at the outset of his career; able 
to talk and write Latin; composes the Venus and 
Adonis in his youth, and takes the manuscript in his 
grip when he goes to London. A pretty ideal to con- 
struct from the poems and plays, but not the man who 
played at the Curtain theater, an indifferent actor, 
both Hallam and White say, who had little Latin, per- 
haps none, as Dr. Rolfe ingenuously says, — equivalent 
to saying he had no education at all — and who died 
at Stratford as devoid of literary accomplishments 
as when he entered London, and what they were 
then, both Halliwell-Phillipps and Grant White have 
shown. 

It is worth while to follow Dr. Baynes a little way 
in his construction of the personality of the author 
by citations from his works, mixed with a liberal 
amount of spinning from his own consciousness. He 
discourses first on the probable curriculum of Strat- 
ford school during the years Shaksper was a pupil 
there. P. 149, Shakespeare Studies, Longmans, 1894, 
(a reprint of Baynes' various essays on Shakespeare). 
I would repeat here that as to the boy ever having 



440 shaksp:er not shakespbare. 

been at Stratford grammar school at all there is no 
testimony whatever. It is a supposition at best. 
"There can be no doubt that he had a very fair educa- 
tion". (That is all very well — a fair education — when 
talking of Shaksper, but sounds like a joke when ap- 
plied to the author of the Shakespeare plays). "And 
it is almost equally certain that he must have obtained 
it at the grammar school of his native town. ' ' 

Dr. Baynes then takes Brinsley and Hoole's account 
of "Grammar school teaching of the time," which, he 
says, ' 'is of the nature of contemporary evidence' ' as 
to what the boy learned. Hoole's book, written about 
1625, fifty years after Shaksper' s boyhood, "abounds 
with references to the course of instruction in the 
Wakefield grammar school, . . . and as they agree 
with Brinsley, we may accept them as a guide to 
the course of instruction at Stratford." (In same 
way, we might as sensibly be called on to accept as the 
course of instruction in the backwoods of one of our 
states the course prescribed in the principal towns and 
cities. Stratford, as we have seen, was one of the 
lowest class of villages of its period; in its stagnation, 
and ignorance, and booklessness, one to compare un- 
favorably with anj^thing that can be found in our back- 
woods, and to suppose that amongst the sort of people 
who lived there, there was growing up a generation of 
children who were receiving the advanced education 
Dr. Baynes outlines, is ridiculous. Kven the man 
Shaksper, player, manager, money lender, thriving and 
rich, did not send his own daughters to school, and in 
the absence of all direct testimony on the matter, it is 
highly improbable that John Shaksper ever sent Will- 



VIKWS OF THBJ BAYNES SCHOOL. 44 1 

iam to school. It would be contrary to the traditions 
and habits, to the hereditary set of the brain of the 
tribe. In all their generations and connections the 
Shakspers had been and were illiterate. Ignorant 
people have no appreciation of any book knowledge 
for their children beyond enough to help them along 
in the world, and they hold the three fs suflBcient for 
that purpose. As to anxiety to have their cubs 
grounded in the classics, it is nonsense.) "In his 
first year, therefore, Shaksper would be occupied 
with the accidence and grammar. In the second year, 
with the elements of grammar, he would read some 
manual of phrases and dialogues. In his third, he 
would take up Cato's Maxims and Ksop's Fables. In 
his fourth, he would read the Eclogues of Mantuanus, 
parts of Ovid, some of Cicero's Epistles and probably 
one of his shorter treatises. In his fifth year, he 
would continue the reading of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 
with parts of Virgil and Terence; and in the sixth 
year, Horace, Plautus, and probably parts of Juvenal 
and Perseus, with some of Cicero's Orations, and 
Seneca's Tragedies. In going through such a course, 
unless the teaching at Stratford was exceptionally in- 
efficient, the boy must have made some progress in 
several of these authors and acquired sufiicient knowl- 
edge of the language to read fairly well at sight the 
more popular verse and prose writers, such as Ovid 
and Cicero." 175. 

^^ Having now gained a general idea of Shaksper' s 
course of school instruction'' ^ (is not the logic delicious?), 
' 'we have next to inquire whether his writings supply 
any, evidence of his having passed through such a 



442 shakspe;r not SHAK:eSP:eAR:^. 

course." 178. And so Dr. Baynes goes on to search 
the plays, and sure enough, he finds all the evidence 
he wanted, and unexpectedly conies on evidence of 
greater proficiency than he had any idea of, a regular 
bonanza. He finds that Shaksper must have had 
some experience of the special exercises belonging to 
the higher forms, amongst others those of making 
I^atin, or writing I<atin epistles, themes and theses. 
188. Good boy! All tradition agrees that he must 
have left school at the age of thirteen (if he went at 
all), because of his father's poverty, the period of 
which is well fixed by the records of suits and judg- 
ments at Stratford against the unlucky man. But this 
excellent son not only learned all that could be learned 
in the regular course of each year he attended school, 
but managed to gain on the upper forms to a surprising 
degree, especially remarkable when we consider that 
all school books were chained to the desk, write I^atin, 
talk lyatin, and revel in Latin generally. Why, then, 
with this vast learning, was he bound apprentice to a 
butcher, and why did he have to consort with vaga- 
bonds and ostracised players in order to make a living ? 
But the marvel does not stop here. "In addition to 
Latin composition, another distinctive branch of study 
in the upper school was rhetoric." 190. The good 
Doctor has as much certainty that there was such a 
school as if he had seen it and run it. "We may 
fairly assume that Shaksper remained long enough 
at school to reach the fifth form, and Love's Labour 's 
Lost supplies a curious piece of evidence tending to 
show that he had gone through a technical training in 
the elements of rhetoric", a discovery on which the 



VIE;WS of the; BAYNBS SCHOOIv. 443 

Doctor plumes himself as having been hitherto over- 
looked by the critics and commentators," etc. 

"The higher qualities of Ovid's genius and work 
were indeed precisely of the kind to attract and fasci- 
nate the youthful author of Venus and Adonis." 201. 
I agree to that myself.* 

"The earlier quotations (from Ovid) show that 
Shaksper had extended his studies in Ovid, not 
only beyond the books usually read in the schools, the 
De Tristibus, and the Metamorphoses, but beyond 
the utmost limits where the help of a translation was 
available." 209. This testimony of the learned Dr. 
Baynes seems to be at variance with the smattering, 
picking up, theory of Phillipps, Wallace, Fiske and 
others. Apparently the author of the plays cannot be 
the man of whom Ben Jonson said, that he had "small 
Latin". That was the bard of Stratford. 

"It is well known that Shaksper derived several 
of the names occurring in his dramas, such as Autoly- 
cus, directly from Ovid. Also Titania is clearly de- 
rived from the study of Ovid in the original." 212. 
On p. 209, he quotes from the Taming of the Shrew, 

"Let's be no stoics, nor no stocks, I pray; 
Or so devote to Aristotle's checks 
As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured." 

The enthusiastic Doctor tells us that this last line 



* Even Wendell, 89, talks of Shaksper's "altering and 
adapting Ovid with excessive verbal care, and altering Plautus; 
but Wendell's co-professor, Rolfe, and the other one, John 
Fiske, are unable to find evidence that the writer of the poems 
and plays had much Latin, "little, perhaps none", Rolfe says. 



444 SHAKSPBR NOT SHAKEISPEARK. 

"suggests that Shaksper had found Ovid's refresh- 
ing tales a welcome relief from his professional labors, 
a stimulating relaxation for leisure hours. ' '* On which 
I would remark, that it is not impossible that this may- 
have been true of the author of the plays, but as to 
William Shaksper, player and manager, he was ac- 
customed to seek a "welcome relief" and "stimulating 
relaxation' ' from certain fluids not far from hand in 
lyondon then as now. 

' 'We have no evidence to show whether Shaksper 
was well acquainted with Catullus or not, but we know 
that he was a diligent student of Ovid. " 329. Truly, 
he who seeks shall find. 

Dr. Baynes' view is that Stratford was a lovely 
town (swept by contract every night), with fine 
houses and cultivated people; a grammar school that 
was auxiliary to Oxford, and free to all comers. The 
Shakspers were of the gentry, of distinguished an- 
cestry on both sides. Young William was nourished 
on the Bible, Holinshed and Plutarch; later on Ovid 
and TuUy ; always slept with a volume of Ovid beneath 
his pillow. Hence, etc. Alas, we remember that Don 
Quixote's battlemented castle resolved itself into a 
humble inn, and the knights and ladies into sow- 
gelders and cobbler's daughters. 



*0f course Shaksper's well-thumbed copy of Ovid had to 
be found, and we read in I^ee, 15: "In the Bodleian Library is a 
copy of the Aldine edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1502) and 
on the title is the signature 'Wm. Sh.' which experts have 
declared — not quite conclusively — to be a genuine autograph of 
the poet. ' ' Inasmuch as this Shaksper never wrote his name 
twice alike, of course this autograph is as genuine as the rest. 



VIEWS OF THK BAYNES SCHOOIv. 445 

The trouble with Dr. Baynes' piece of sculpture is 
that we happen to know what the historical Shaksper 
was, and the sculptured creature does not in any one 
point resemble the real individual That Shaksper 
was himself a poet, after a fashion, no one denies. 
His effusions are well known. Thus: 

" Ten in the hundred the Devil allows, 
But Combe will have twelve, he swears and vows, 
If any one asks who lives in this tombe, 
' Ho', quoth the Devil, 't is my John a Combe." 

This, and two or three morceaux of like character, 
including the lyUcy lampoon, and the doggerel verse on 
his tomb-stone, are all that are authentically recorded 
of the works of William Shaksper, player and man- 
ager. 

"Time has spared two specimens of Shaksper' s mode 
of attack. It so happens that one of them is a ballad, 
and the other an epigram; the first written on a per- 
son whose park he had robbed, and the second on a 
friend who had left him a legacy." Gifford, Memoirs 
of Ben Jonson, Moxon's Ed. i8. 

As to the probability of any such thorough and ad- 
vanced school having existed at such a place as Strat- 
ford: "The common people were densely ignorant. 
They had to pick up their mother tongue as best 
they could. The first English grammar was not pub- 
lished until 1586 (after Shaksper had left school). It 
was evident that much schooling was impossible, for 
the necessary books did not exist. The horn-book 
for teaching the alphabet would almost exhaust the 
resources of the common day-schools that might ex- 



446 SHAKSPER NOT shaki;spe;ar:^. 

ist in the towns and villages. I^ittle, if any, English 
was taught even in the lower classes of the grammar 
schools." Goadby, England of Shakespeare, quoted 
from Donnelly, 30. 

"As a rule, since the event (the Reformation), 
there was no educated person in the parish beyond 
the parson." Prof. Thorold Rogers, Donnelly, 30. 

What Halliwell-Phillipps says of the educational 
possibilities of the boy Shaksper, I have before re- 
corded: that, if he went to school at all, his earliest 
knowledge of I^atin was derived from the elementary 
books mentioned, — that all the authorities unite in 
telling us that his acquaintance with I^atin through- 
out his life was of a limited character; that books 
were very scarce; and that the Latin grammar and a 
few classical works, chained to the desk of the free 
school, were probably the only volumes of the kind to 
be found in Stratford." Now, Mr. Halliwell-PhilHpps 
is stated by Wilder to have been a ' 'great Shaksperean 
scholar and antiquary. . . . Gradually he came 
to concentrate upon Shaksper alone, and more par- 
ticularly on the facts of his life. ' ' He dealt in facts, 
as Dr. Baynes dealt in fiction, and therefore, of the 
two, when facts are in question, his book alone is trust- 
worthy. 

What became of the other learned youths who grad- 
uated at the same school? Is there any known man 
of that generation who has been traced to the Strat- 
ford school? Not one, and for the best of reasons: 
there was no such boy or man, and no such school. 

"Even had there been books, it seems that there 
were no schoolmasters in the days when young William 



viEiws OF the; bayne;s schooi.. 447 

went to school, who could have taught him what was 
necessary. Ascham, who came a little earlier than 
Shaksper, said that such masters as were to be had 
amounted to nothing, and for the most part, so be- 
haved themselves that their very name is hateful to 
the scholar, etc. Milton, who came a little later, said 
that their teaching was mere babblement and notions. ' ' 
Morgan, V. and A., 143. 

Craik says: "It maybe doubted if popular education 
was farther extended at the close of the reign of 
Elizabeth than it was at the commencement of that of 
her father or her grandfather. Kven the length of 
time that printing had been at work, and the multi- 
plication of books that must have taken place, had 
probably but very little, if at all, extended the knowl- 
edge and the habit of reading among the mass of the 
people." I think we may dismiss the subject of the 
Stratford Grammar School and the learning Baynes 
imagines was acquired there, as not deserving a second 
thought. 

Nothing new concerning the boy, or the man Shak- 
sper, has been discovered since the end of the century 
of his death. 

Mrs. Dall, 160, says: "On the 24th of March, 1603, 
the Queen died. In spite of many marks of her favor 
he wrote no verse of eulogy or lamentation. His 
silence was remarked, for more than one of the 
smaller poets called on him by name to bewail the dead 
Queen. He never forgave the Queen, who put Essex 
to death," etc., etc. 

According to Ingleby, p. 56, an anonymous versi- 



448 SHAKSPER NOT shake;spe;are;. 

fier, 1603, wrote "A mourneful Dittie entitled Eliza- 
beth's Losse", etc., in which are these lines: — 

"You poets all, brave Shakspeare, Jonson, Greene, 
Bestow your time to write for England's Oueene, 
Lament, lament, lament you English Peeres, 
Lament your losse possest so many years. 
Returne your songs and sonnets and yotir lavs: 
To set forth sweet Elizabetha's praise." 

To be sure Shakespeare, the poet, is here called on, 
but the summons has no application to Shaksper the 
player. Beyond this Ingleby gives nothing, and evi- 
dently this anonymous smaller poet was the only one 
who called on Shakespeare to bewail, etc. Player 
Shaksper did not lament in verse; he would have at 
once exposed himself. There is a story of a jackdaw 
in a dovecote, who opened his mouth with disastrous 
results to his standing. 



vib;ws of th:^ phii^upps schooIv, e;tc. 449 



CHAPTER XIX. 

VIEWS OF THE PHIIvIvIPPS SCHOOL ; OF MR. FivEAY, 
AND SOME OTHER COMMENTATORS. 

As I have said, there are various schools of Shak- 
spereans. One, including such writers as Halliwell- 
Phillipps and Richard Grant White, give faith to the 
traditions and testimonies, and allow the boy William 
a very humble beginning, scanty instruction, followed 
by apprenticeship to a butcher, "the practical life of 
a butcher," H.-P. says, with, from the nature of the 
case, in that ignorant and bookless neighborhood, no 
opportunities for mental improvement, and take him 
to lyondon about twenty-one or twenty-two years of 
age. The next few years, concerning which they say 
there is not a particle of evidence as to his occupations, 
are held by this school as having been the educational 
period of Shaksper's life, and necessarily. He put 
out, they say, the Venus and Adonis seven years after 
he entered I^ondon, and as this proved his education, 
he must, somehow, have educated himself within 
these seven years; because, as Halliwell-Phillipps ex- 
presses it, ' 'it is difficult to believe that when he first 
left Stratford he was not all but destitute of polished 
accomplishments. After he had once, however, gained a 
footing in London, he would have been in different 
conditions. Books of many kinds would have been 
accessible to him and he would have been within daily 
hearing of the dramatic poetry of the age. There 



450 shakspe;r not SHAEB;SP:eARE;. 

would also no doubt have been occasional facilities 
for picking up a little smattering of tlie continental 
languages, and it is also beyond a doubt that lie added 
somewhat to his classical knowledge during his resi- 
dence in the metropolis. ' ' Can Mr. Phillipps be talk- 
ing of the same man Professor Baynes has in mind, 
the accomplished student, who in his teens was fa- 
miliar with Ovid and Catullus ? 

"It is, for instance, hardly possible, that the Amores 
of Ovid, whence he derived his earliest motto, pre- 
fixed to the Venus and Adonis, could have been one of 
his school-books." H.-P. 

Mr. Fleay, as we have seen, takes a very different 
view from that of Mr. Phillipps, In the first place, 
he brings young Shaksper to I^ondon from one to two 
years later than Phillipps does; in the next place, he 
has him writing plays — splays of high life — almost at 
once, and keeps him writing play after play in rapid 
succession. Apparently he would allow no other oc- 
cupation to interfere with writing — that was the young 
man's special business. On page 25, however, we are 
told that up to 1593 (from 1587 to 1593) "he had been 
an actor, gradually rising in the estimation of his fel- 
lows," (this must be pure intuition on Mr. Fleay 's 
part, for there is no testimony to that effect) , ' 'but had 
often been obliged to travel, and to act about town in 
inn-yards, and his play writing had been confined to 
vamping old plays by other men, ar at best, to assist- 
ing such writers as "Wilson and Peele in producing new 
ones." Yet it would seem clear to the average mind, 
that if, in 1589, two years after he entered I^ondon, he 
produced lyove's I^abour's lyost, followed almost im- 



VIKWS OF THK PHII,L,IPPS SCHOOI,, ETC. 45 1 

mediately by lyove's lyabour 's Won (Much Ado About 
Nothing), and by 1591, the three other plays before 
enumerated, he must have obtained somewhere a very 
advanced education, and that, of course, could only 
have been gained at Stratford. 

On page 7, we read: "Nothing whatever is known 
of his early life, ' ' and the only two reliable facts are, 
the date of his baptism, and that of his marriage, all 
between being a blank. Doubtless, if this were so, 
William Shaksper might have had an education as 
thorough as John Milton's, for aught that could be 
known, and have come naturally, without violence, to 
be a writer of poems and plays, though it would still 
be a matter of astonishment that so accomplished a 
youth could have sunk so low, at the age of twenty- 
three, as to be compelled to consort with strolling 
players. 

Mr. Fleay reasons back from the plays — this young 
man wrote them; therefore he had an education and 
training that enabled him to write them. As this is 
unsupported by any testimony, and contrary to all the 
traditions, Mr. Fleay's view cannot be the correct one, 
although he is probably right when he fixes the dates 
at which the several Shakespeare plays first appeared. 

' 'Thou canst not utter what thou dost not know' ' , 
the author of the plays tells us. It is none of Mr. 
Fleay ' s business where young Shaksper got his learn- 
ing and accomplishments, and he gives no hint as to 
what he thinks of that matter. His book is written 
for "discussion of the evidence on which the chrono- 
logical succession of Shakespeare's plays is based", 
and Phillipps' "facts" may take care of themselves. 



452 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPEARK. 

Here is a Shakespeare play acted in 1589, and, of 
course, written earlier, and before that, preparation 
made for it by study, meditation, and travel. This is 
followed by three others, in 1590 and 1591.* One set 
of facts refuses to make a tight joint with the other set 
of facts, and like the memorable ass between the two 
bundles of hay, William Shaksper is left hungry — 
and is also out in the cold. Some other man wrote 
those plays. William is not to be blamed apparently; 
his greatness was thrust upon him, long after he was 
moldering in the ground. During his lifetime, and he 
lived twenty-four years after the first appearance of a 
Shakespeare play, not a soul attributed the authorship 
to him or thought of him as an author of any kind. 
More than that, there is no evidence that he ever 
claimed to be the author of the Shakespeare plays, or 
any one play of the thirty-six; or that he ever opened 
his mouth on the subject of authorship. 

* Wendell's book is one of the latest on this subject, and the 
author says, p. 82: "The weight of opinion makes this, Ivove's 
Labour's Lost, the earliest play unquestionably assigned to 
Shakspere. It is conjectured from internal evidence to have 
been written as early as 1589, or 1590." Of the Comedy of 
Errors, he says, p. 88: "Modern critics generally agree in plac- 
ing it, on internal evidence, before 1591, with a slight prefer- 
ence for 1589, or 1590." Of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, he 
says, 92: "On internal evidence modern critics generally agree 
in placing it early — from 1591 to 1593 or so." Of Romeo and 
Juliet, he says, 116: "Conjectures as to date range from 1591." 
So it is apparent that the best modern critics are agreed that 
several of the Shakespeare plays were written during the years 
Phillipps assigns to the educational period of William Shaksper' s 
life, and that the series was begun shortly after that young fel- 
low came to London, 



'The; smattejring, picking-up schooi.. 453 
CHAPTER XX. 

THE SMATTERING, PICKING-UP SCHOOIy. 

Dr. Wallace makes the young man gather knowl- 
edge of law terms by attending inquests and Justices' 
Courts at Stratford, and by occasional attendance upon 
the Courts at Westminster, after he came to lyondon. 
He continues: "Through his foreign acquaintances 
he might have obtained translations of some of those 
Italian or Spanish tales which furnish a portion of his 
plots, and which have been supposed to indicate an 
amount of learning he could not have possessed. ' ' 

This school regards Shaksper as a phenomenal hu- 
man sponge which imbibed knowledge by capillary at- 
traction, and not by hard labor, as ordinary mortals 
do. The author of these works, Dr. Wallace says, 
"was a transcendent genius, and it is the special 
quality of genius to be able to acquire and assimilate 
knowledge . . . under conditions that to ordinary 
men would be impossible. Admitting, as we must ad- 
mit, the genius, there is no difficulty, no impossibility. " 
And Dr. Wallace goes on to say, as I have mentioned 
before, that Shaksper got his exquisite knowledge of 
Nature, which the plays show to be extraordinary and 
profound, (but which the writer in the Quarterly above 
quoted proves to have been gained from books and 
traditions and not from nature) from living twenty 
years "in the midst of the calm and beautiful scenery 
of Warwickshire"., (Though what connection there 



454 SHAKSPEiR Nol" shaee^spe^ar:^, 

is between scenery and a knowledge of nature, does 
not appear. ) He acquired ' 'some portion of the knowl- 
edge of manners and speech of nobles and kings 
which appear in the historical plays from resorting at 
times of festivity to the lordly castles of Warwick and 
Kenilworth", aided by the instruction of the servants 
and retainers. "He would have studied human na- 
ture under every possible aspect in I^ondon, then as 
now, crowded with adventurers of all nations." 
(London was, in 1603, a city of 150,000 inhabitants — 
the size of Jersey City or Minneapolis in 1900). How 
he gained his classical learning, so extensive that the 
Latin language became "amalgamated and consub- 
stantiated with his native thought, ' ' and how he be- 
came the possessor of the 15,000 to 21,000 vocabulary, 
Dr. "Wallace, and none of that school explain. They 
speak of a "smattering", of "picking-up" somewhat. 
Mrs. Dall says: "He wrote as a bird sings". A 
writer in the Boston Transcript, March 30th, 1894, 
says of him: "He had but a smattering of book- 
learning. Nature was his only book"; which is to 
say that he had no learning at all. "Was this man, 
so extraordinary from whatever side we look at 
him ... an inspired idiot, a vast irregular genius, 
a simple rustic, warbling his native wood-notes wild; 
in other words insensible to the benefits of culture?' ' 
Lowell. Even to Halliwell-Phillipps the Shakespeare 
plays seem to have been written by inspiration, not by 
design, and it is the only way to account for them, if 
player Shaksper wrote the plays. 

Another writer in the Transcript, hailing from Ber- 
lin, July 3rd, 1894, tells the public that Kdwin Bor- 



^nn smai^te;ring, picking-up schooi.. 455 

man, poet, etc. , has shown, in a book of many pages, 
that Bacon was the author of the Shakespeare Plays. 
In a few da3^s he is followed by a long letter from one 
John Michels, taking the ground that Bacon could 
not have been the author, because the plays show the 
author to have been illiterate and are everywhere de- 
fective — full of all sorts of blunders. This sort of 
talk intentionally belittles the acquirements of the 
real author, in order to make him come into agreement 
with the historic man aud player William Shaksper. 

lyCt us see what a Professor of English at Harvard 
College teaches his classes; quoting Barrett- Wendell's 
"William Shakspere", published 1894, P- 400: 
"Nothing more surprises such readers of Shakespeare 
as are not practical men of letters" (such as Hartley 
Coleridge, S. T. Coleridge, J. R. I^owell, Henry J. 
Ruggles, and that ilk, I suppose) "than the man's ap- 
parent learning. To one used to writing, the phe- 
nomenon is less surprising. Whoever will take a few 
Elizabethan books. North's Plutarch, for example, 
Paj^nter's Palace of Pleasure, Fox's Martyrs, Holins- 
hed, and Coke on I^ittleton," (Hear that, ye shades of 
great lawyers from Elizabeth to Victoria!) "and with 
the help of stray passages from all, translate some 
narrative from one of these into blank- verse dialogue, 
will produce an effect of erudition which shall pro- 
foundly impress not only his readers but himself. 
Whoever has a few compendious works on hand, and 
knows how to use them, can make himself seem a 
miracle of learning to whoever does not know his 
secret. . . . Given these facts, and given the ex- 
ceptionally concrete habit of thought and phrase 



456 SHAKSPE^R NOT SHAKBjSPElARlJ. 

native to Shakspere, and Shakspere's learning is no 
longer a marvel, except to those who insist upon 
finding it so. ' ' 

The lectures of Wendell may be the source of so 
many letters in the Transcript, the past few years, be- 
littling the author of these plays. I should like to 
hear this lecturer of Harvard, who thinks that any- 
body could have written these immortal works — a mere 
matter of trick to one who knows the secret — explain 
how it came to pass that the author attained the 
enormous vocabulary we have heard of; how it was 
that he coined new words by hundreds, currente calamo, 
whenever he needed to do so to express his thought, 
coined directly from the Latin or Greek root; whose 
mind was so imbued with the lyatin language that he 
unconsciously incorporated it into his English; whose 
classical allusions are amalgamated and consubstan- 
tiated with his native thought, according to one used 
to writing, if anybody ever was, how it happened that 
Hallam, and Coleridge, and Lowell, and hundreds of 
other men used to writing, have recorded their verdict 
that the man's learning was real and prodigious, and 
not apparent and fraudulent; how it is that Prin- 
cipal Baynes extols the solid learning, which he says 
the writings supply clear evidence of; how it was that 
he could have written works that are classed by Mr. 
Marsh with the Bible and Milton; how it was that, 
according to Mr. Ruggles, a diligent student of both 
Bacon's works and the Shakespeare plays, the author 
of the latter was everywhere in touch with the Bacon- 
ian philosophy, and the whole scope and tenor of the 
plays exemplifies the system of that philosophy; how 



I^HE; smattering, PICKING-UP SCHOOIv. 457 

it was that lawyer White declared that legal phrases 
flow from his pen as a part of his vocabulary and 
parcel of his thought; and Chief- Justice Campbell, 
that the works show the author to be very familiar 
with some of the most abstruse proceedings in Eng- 
lish jurisprudence, and that Shakespeare's law is al- 
ways good law. 

(Is it possible that any literary man to-day, to say 
nothing of a professional lecturer on English literature, 
can know so little of law as to suppose that a play- 
wright, educated or uneducated, could pick up good 
law and apply it correctly, and make himself familiar 
with the abstruse proceedings of English jurisprudence, 
by glancing at and running through Coke on lyittleton ? 
Certainly the language used assumes that such a thing 
is possible. Is there not a law school at Cambridge, 
where a literary, non-legal man, could be told what a 
ridiculous claim that is?) I rather think lecturer 
Wendell would do well to study his Shakespeare anew, 
and see if he has not overlooked something. 

On p. 423-4, of same book, I find this: "The son of 
a ruined country tradesman, and saddled with a wife 
and three children, his business at twenty-three was 
to conduct himself so that he might end it not as a 
laborer, but as a gentleman. After five-and-twenty 
years of steady work, this end had been accomplished. 
. Such a material achievement as Shakspere's 
involves an imaginative feat quite as wonderful, if 
not so rare, as the imaginative feat involved in the 
creati'on of Shakspere's works." Which looks very 
much like an assertion that the making one's pile is 
quite as wonderful an achievement as the writing of 



458 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKEJSPKAR:^. 

great poems and plays; and the implication is tiiat if 
a man could accomplish the one, he had in him the 
possibility of the other. 

It is a strange thing that this Shaksper, who had 
but a smattering of learning, and that consisting of 
such bits as he had picked up after he came to Lon- 
don, should, as the author "Shakespeare", be cited on 
every page of the great dictionaries for current and 
correct usage of English. According to some advo- 
cates of the smattering view, he was so ignorant that 
he did not know that Bohemia was an inland coun- 
try, or that Ajax and Ulysses were not modern Ital- 
ians — made endless exhibitions of himself in history, 
archaeology, geography; yet when it came to the words 
used, there was no ignorance, no blundering. He 
blundered in all directions save in the use of the Eng- 
lish language. It is enough to find a word in the 
Shakespeare plays to give it authority and currency. 
This man was a great worker in words, says Ruggles, 
"He had supreme dominion over every form of ex- 
pression". We have seen that Marsh asserts that 
Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible were the three 
lode-stars that held the language firm, the attraction 
of the Shakespeare star as powerful as either of the 
others. Curious enough that nine-tenths of the peo- 
ple in the English-speaking countries should have got 
it in their heads that one of the three who helped to 
hold the language firm, was an uneducated butcher, 
who spent the first twenty-two years of his life in a 
bookless neighborhood, and the last thirty years as a 
tramp player, or as a purveyor of ' 'nasty fish-scraps' ' 
to the stinkards and prostitutes who frequented the 



The; sma'i^tejring, piCEiNa-up sCHoot. 459 

public theater. There was a Shakespeare as well as a 
Shaksper, and a little mixing has been done. 

Fleay, 82, tells us that these plays could never have 
been conceived without much solitude, much suffer- 
ing and much concentration.* But this is neither 
more nor less than an assertion that manager Shaksper 
had no hand in them. The authorities are agreed that 
he led the life of a strolling player from the beginning 
to the end of his career. At no time, then, had he 
solitude. He could not have had it as he tramped, 
and when in lyondon, he was one of those who kept 
high jinks at the taverns. There is no record of, and 
no probability of, his ever suffering a pang, being the 
man he was, beyond what he felt at the escape of 
some poor devil of a debtor whom he had got into his 
clutches. "When, in 1609, one Addenbroke, whom he 
had tormented for six pounds, skipped, and our 
usurer-player had to proceed against his bail, one 
Hornby, (Fleay, 161), his anguish must have been 
powerful; and when his nice scheme of getting pos- 
session of the common fields came to naught, doubt- 
less he beat his breast. I agree with Mr, Fleay, how- 
ever, that the author of the plays, whoever he was, 
had worked in solitude, suffered much, and had an 
amazing power of concentration. But he was of an- 
other species from this player. It is truly a remark- 
able thing that every characteristic of the author as 

* "Whoever wrote King Lear must have been intellectually- 
alert to the verge of madness, passionately sensitive to all the mis- 
ery he perceived, ironical yet pitiful; kept within the bounds of 
sanity mostly by the blessed accident that he had mastered and 
controlled a great art of expression." Wendell, 301. 



460 SHAKSPi^R NOT SHAKEJSPKARB. 

deduced from the plays, renders it the more impossible 
that player Shaksper had any hand in them. 

As to acquiring knowledge without study, it cannot 
be done. One man will learn more easily than an- 
other, but the one has to work as well as the other. 
Genius will do wonders with material once gathered, 
but genius does not provide or originate facts on which 
to work. No man ever became learned out of his own 
.consciousness. The verdict of mankind, based on all 
experience, is that knowledge comes neither by in- 
spiration nor accident, and that there is no royal, or 
other than the common, road to learning. Daniel 
Webster said to one who asked him if his reply to 
Hayne had not been extemporaneous, "Young man, 
there is no such thing as extemporaneous acquisi- 
tion." Lodge, lyife of Webster, tells us (p. 190) that 
"he is reported to have said that his whole life had 
been a preparation for the reply to Hayne. Whether 
he said it or not, the statement is true. The thoughts 
. had been garnered for years, and this in a 
greater or less degree was true of all his finest efforts. 
The preparation on paper was trifling, but the mental 
preparation, extending over weeks, sometimes per- 
haps over years, was elaborate to the last point." 

"Men give me credit for genius," said Alexander 
Hamilton. "All the genius I have lies in just this: 
when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly 
day and night. It is part of me; I explore it in all its 
bearings; my mind becomes pervaded with it. Then 
the effort which I make people are pleased to call the 
fruit of genius; it is the fruit of labor and thought." 
A distinguished writer, commenting on this, said: 



the; smatte;ring, picking-up schooi.. 461 

"Hamilton was a genius in spite of his disavowal; 
but genius cannot supply the place of information, 
nor render unnecessary the thorough work which must 
precede mastery of any subject," etc. And yet there 
are people — scholars too — who argue and pretend to 
believe that one man of all the sons of men was so 
constructed that he was able to toss off learned works 
with no preparation, no studj^ and no information, 
and that all he did this for was to fill his theater and 
his own pockets. They appear to be rational on other 
subjects. They would scout the idea of something 
coming out of nothing; of effects without sufficient 
causes; of water rising higher than its source, or 
running up hill; of the barber's basin being the 
golden helmet of Mambrino. Sane on all subjects 
save one, Shaksper; and there as lunatic as ever was 
Don Quixote. 

On the other hand, Dr. Baynes, finding profound 
learning, knowledge and accomplishments, in the 
poems and plays, and feeling confident that after 
young Shaksper came to lyondon and began his life 
with the strolling players, there was no chance for 
acquisition, gives him an ample equipment at the 
Stratford school, and all the advantages of birth and 
breeding of which I have spoken. No matter what the 
traditions and testimonies are, they come in contact 
with the plain fact that this man, even while very 
young, had vast learning acquired from books, as the 
poems and plays show, and also that their author 
was a gentleman born and bred. From Dr. Bajmes' 
point of view, this theory is undoubtedly correct. If 
William Shaksper, of Stratford, really wrote these 



462 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKESPEIARK. 

plays, the traditions must be swept away as absurd 
and false, and the author must be built up from his 
works. And Baynes does build very skillfully a 
structure, which, if we knew nothing whatever of the 
history of Shaksper, might be accepted as a faithful 
likeness of the boy and man. Neither school, there- 
fore, presents us with the historical man; he is ig- 
nored altogether. 

It is just as credible that an unlettered country lad, 
coming up to London, should presently put out the 
counterparts of Wallace's Island Life, or Darwin's 
Origin, under immediate inspiration, or spontaneous 
acquisition, works that cost either of those authors 
fully thirty years of laborious preparation, as that the 
youth William Shaksper, and the man Shaksper, de- 
picted on the pages of Halliwell-Phillipps, could have 
written the poems and plays attributed to "William 
Shakespeare' ' . If one were told that John Thomas 
took a running leap and vaulted over an umbrageous 
oak, no evidence of alleged eye-witnesses could make 
a reasonable man believe it. He would say there must 
have been some trick, some illusion, something he 
could not understand, and refuse his faith. So with 
the Shaksper case; no testimony, however direct, 
should make a reasonable man believe that this un- 
learned youth and man was or could be the author of 
the learned works in question. It happens that there 
is no direct testimony whatever. Absolutely, beyond 
Ben Jonson's gibing elegiac verses, (as we have seen, 
even Mr. Fleay tel!s us that little value is to be at- 
tributed to them), there is no testimony of any kind — 



the; smattering, picking-up schooi.. 463 

nothing but imputation and general reputation. These 
things occurred three hundred years ago, and there 
was some secret, some deception, some illusion. That 
from an unlearned man proceeded learned writings 
is an impossible thing, and reversing Tertulliau's 
maxim, being impossible, it is therefore incredible. 



464 SHAKSPiER NOT shake;spe;ar:^. 

CHAPTER XXL 

THE IvIKENESSES OF WIIvIvIAM SHAKSPER. 

Men of intellect have intellectual heads, and learn- 
ing leaves its impress on the face. The only authen- 
tic likeness of Shaksper, the only one certified to by 
any man who had personally known him, is that pre- 
fixed to the Folio of 1623,. distinguished as the "Droes- 
hout". 

In 1624, James Boaden published "An Enquiry into 
the authenticity of various Pictures and Prints which 
from the decease of the Poet to our own times, have 
been offered to the public as Portraits of Shakespeare. ' ' 
No. I is the Droeshout likeness, and I give a copy of 
it from Boaden, on the following page. 

Under it, in the Folio, stand Jonson's lines: 

"This figure, that thou seest put 
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut; 
Wherein the graver had a strife 
With nature, to out-do the life;" etc. 

Ingleby, 141, on this verse, says: "Jonson here 
contrives to pay both Engraver and Poet the highest 
compliment; if the former could have drawn the wit 
of the latter as well as he has drawn his face, the 
print from his drawing would be the finest thing ever 
done. ' ' 

Mr. R. G. White says: "This print is a hard, 
wooden, staring thing"; and Mr. Donnelly, that "no 



the; likenkssks op wii.i,iam shakspkr. 465 

Shaksperean has yet been found to admit it as the 
idol of his dreams. ' ' 

Norris, Portraits of Shakspere, says: "It is not 




known from what it was copied, and many think it 
unlike any human being." 

Morgan says: "The hair is straight, combed down 
the sides of the face, and bunched over the ears; the 
forehead is disproportionately high; the face has the 



466 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKEJSPEARE). 

wooden expression familiar in the Indians used as 
signs for tobacconists shops, accompanied by an idiotic 
stare." 

HalHwell-Phinipps, I, 297: "The Stratford effigy 
and this engraving are the only unquestionably au- 
thentic representations of the living Shakespeare 
(Shaksper) that are known to exist; not one of the 
numerous others, for which claims to the distinction 
have been advanced, having an evidential pedigree of 
a satisfactory character. ' ' He considers the Droeshout 
an authentic likeness, because of Jonson's verses un- 
der it; which verses, it is clear to me, testify to this 
portrait having been a caricature. 

In the long line of illustrious English poets, William 
Shaksper, held by most people to have written the 
Shakespeare poems and plays, and to tower above all 
that Britain has produced in the way of poets, is the 
only man who looks in the Droeshout likeness of him 
<to be an interloper in that company./ Chaucer and 
Spenser, Milton and Wordsworth, Byron, Scott, Ten- 
n3^son, in their portraits, look the great men they were; 
whereas Shaksper is vulgar by comparison with any 
one of them, and has the presentation of little better 
than a fool. (Among variety-show or circus people, 
perhaps he would look as intellectual as the next man). 
Hence the pathetic eagerness with which his disap- 
pointed votaries turn to the bogus Flower portrait, the 
bogus Chandos portrait, to the bogus death-mask, — 
given in the Hamlet volume of the Temple Shake- 
speare as an undoubted relic — the bogus "best like- 
ness", composed and set up in Stratford-on-Avon by 
lyord Ronald Gower; ready to accept anything so that 



TH:S IvIKBNi^SSElS OF WIIvLIAM SHAKSPEJR. 467 

it looks entirely unlike that Droeshout or unlike the 
man himself. 

Skottowe, App. 23, says: "Without the reader has- 
had the misfortune to behold this much eulogized 
specimen of the graphic art, he will be surprised to 
learn that the plate is not only at variance with the 
tradition of Shakspere's appearance having been pre- 
possessing; but irreconcilable with a belief of its ever 
having borne a striking resemblance to any human 
being. Its defects, indeed, are so obvious, that it has 
been thought necessary to apologize for Jonson by the 
production of similar instances of prostitution of com- 
pliment; and also by the supposition that he never saw 
the engraving," etc. 

Drake speaks of the "wretched engraving, thus un- 
deservedly eulogized" (by Jonson), and says: "As 
Mr. Steevens has well remarked, Shakspere's coun- 
tenance, deformed by Droeshout, resembles the sign 
of Sir Roger de Coverley, when it had been changed 
into a Saracen's head; on which occasion the Spectator 
observes that the features of the gentle Knight were 
still apparent through the lineaments of the ferocious 
Mussulman." 

Reed, 35, says of this Droeshout: "It is, without 
doubt, a caricature," and he quotes Ingleby, "I, for 
one, do not believe that it had any trustworthy ex- 
emplar"; and Norris, "It is not known from what it 
it was copied, and many think it unlike any human 
being." 

Mr. I^ee^ has prefaced his book with a cut of what 
is called the Flower likeness, and on page 288, says: 
"There is little doubt that young Droeshout in fashion- 



468 SHAKSPEIR NOT shakksp:eare;. 

ing his engraving worked from a painting, and there is 
a likelihood that the original picture from which he 
worked has lately come to light. As recently as 1892, 
Mr. Edgar Flower, of Stratford-on-Avon, discovered 
in the possession of Mr. H. C. Clements, residing at 
Peckham Rye, a portrait alleged to represent Shake- 
speare. The picture, which was faded, and somewhat 
worm-eaten, dated beyond all doubt from the early 
years of the seventeeth century. It was paintsd on a 
panel formed of two planks of old elm, and in the 
upper left hand corner was the inscription, 'Willm 
Shakespeare, 1609. Mr. Clement purchased the por- 
trait of an obscure dealer about 1840, and knew noth- 
ing of its history beyond what he set down on a slip 
of paper when he acquired it: 'The original portrait 
of Shakespeare, from which the now famous Droeshout 
engraving was taken,' " etc. Mr. Lee goes on: "Con- 
noisseurs have almost unreservedly pronounced the 
picture to be anterior in date to the engraving, and 
they have reached the conclusion that, in all probabil- 
ity, Martin Droeshout directly based his work upon the 
painting, . . Although the history of the portrait 
rests on critical conjecture, and on no external con- 
temporary evidence, there seems good ground* for re- 
garding it as a portrait of Shakespeare painted in his 

••■• Behold a fine example of the genesis and growth of a Shak- 
sperean tnjth.. Mr. Lee thinks ' 'there seems good ground, ' ' etc. ; 
the next man assumes that the ground is good; and prefaces the 
new edition of the Temple Shakespeare with the Flower portrait 
as a genuine likeness of the bard. First the demand, then the 
find and a suggestion, and presently the assertion, and the myth 
is on its way! 



THB IvIKKNESSKS Olf WII^WAM SHAKSP^R. 469 

life time— in the forty-fifth year of his age." I give a 
copy of this hkeness. 




It is another case of demand and supply. "When 
anything in the Shaksper line is needed, the gods have 
a way of producing it. I should say that the face of 
this picture represents a man of not over thirty- 
five years of age, which is about that of the Droes- 
hout. It has a conspicuous moustache of which there 
is no trace in the Droeshout. But without criticising 



470 SHAKSPEJR NOT SHAK:eSPE;ARE. 

the portrait myself, I have only to refer to a paper 
published in Harper's Magazine, May, 1897: "On two 
undescribed Portraits of Shakespeare", byJohnCorbin. 
After relating all the arguments used to authenticate 
the Flower Portrait, and the opinions of experts — 
artists and antiquaries — in its favor, he goes on to say: 
"In the discussion that followed, (at a meeting of the 
Antiquarian Society) Sir Charles Robinson, Her Ma- 
jesty's Surveyor of Pictures, pointed out that the in- 
scription is in cursive characters. The custom of that 
period was to use capitals. Mr. Sidney Colvin, Keeper 
of Prints in the British Museum, told me later that 
this cursive inscription was unique in his experience. 
Abandoning therefore the inscription and date. Sir 
Charles guardedly attributed the picture to the early 
half of the seventeenth century. 

"On the other hand. Dr. Furnivall assailed the pict- 
ure with his customary vigor, on the ground that it 
has no pedigree, and declared that it was a make-up 
of the late seventeenth century from the print and the 
bust, both of which the artist had seen. . . . Since 
the meeting of the Society of Antiquaries, Sir Charles 
Robinson has shifted his ground. In spite of the ex- 
pert testimony that the panel is antique English elm, 
Sir Charles still declares (October, 1896) that it is 
foreign, and pronounces the portrait a very careful 
forgery. In September, 1896, Mr. Sidney Colvin told 
me that, though he should assign the portrait to a 
very late date, perhaps the first half of the seven- 
teenth century, he regarded it as a very careful copy 
of the print. Sir K. J. Poynter observed that there 
are traces of an earlier portrait on the surface, notably 



mn I.IKE)NB;SS:eS OF WII.I.IAM SHAKSP^R. 47 1 

the edge of a ruff in the right-hand corner, and a line 
from the right eye down the cheek." Mr. Corbin was 
desirous of getting a scientific description of the por- 
trait, and "so wrought upon the enthusiasm of a con- 
noisseur of the school of Morelli and Berenson, that he 
went with me to Stratford. Although he insists that 
his judgment is merely that of an amateur, he has 
kindly permitted me to copy his notes: %ife-size 
painted on a thin coating of gesso. . . . The 
panel is English elm, worm-holed, and of undoubted 
antiquity. Red appears in the ground where the over- 
painting has cracked off. Hair apparently painted in 
bitumen. All the drawing precisely like that on the 
print, including costume. Technique, an illogical com- 
bination of broad, scratchy, and of smooth. Clearly, 
a late copy of the print'." 

Mr. Corbin speaks of the worm holes in the panel, 
and certain appearances of same: "Some of them are 
clear-cut; others seem painted round the edges; and at 
least one, in the line of the right cheek-bone, has 
plainly been painted over; it is discernible now only 
because the paint has sagged into it. If these ap- 
pearances are to be relied on, the painter sought to 
give an appearance of antiquity by using a panel al- 
ready worm-holed. In coloring, the portrait resem- 
bles the bust with a single exception. I failed to find 
the least trace of hazel in the eyes; they are simply 
muddy blue." 

So much for this Flower portrait ! We shall have to 
fall back on I^ord Ronald Gower's "best likeness." 

The cut next given is taken from a photogravure of 
Macnionnie's statue of player Shaksper, made for the 



472 shaksp:Sr not shakkspe;ars. 

Congressional lyibrary, at Washington, and is meant 
to follow the Droeshout portrait, which it does pretty- 
well. But the sculptor has thought best to give a 




bulging upper forehead to his creation, which is not 
in the Droeshout, and doubtless this is meant to intro- 
duce a modicum of brains. It would seem rather 
rickets than brains. As in the Droeshout, the brow is 
depressed, showing a very weak development of the 
perceptive organs. The figure is hardly what might 
be expected as that of a man equal to writing the 
Shakespeare plays. He seems to be lecturing to one 
of Professor Wendell's classes on English belles-lettres. 



THE) like;nkssks op wii.i,iam shaksper. 473 

One thing is noticeable, that there is not the least re- 
semblance between this face, made from the Droeshout, 
and the face of the Stratford bust. 

No. 2, of Boaden, is a portrait prefixed to the edi- 
tion of the plays of 1 630, supposed by that author to 
be a copy of the other, ' 'or the unknown picture from 
which it was taken. ' ' 

No. 3, the "Kelton Head," is dismissed as spurious. 

Next in order comes the Stratford bust, No. 4, and 
copied here from Boaden (see on following page) : 

This bust represents a man fully fifty years of age, 
built after the model of a bullet-headed general, one 
of Elizabeth's warriors, perhaps. It has a short, 
thick, nearly straight nose; * a long and thick upper 
lip; a full lower lip; a wide, flat face; a stout jaw and 
square chin; eyes projecting; mustache midway be- 
tween the nose and edge of lip, tightly curling up- 
ward; a pointed beard; and the lightly curling hair 
ends above the ears. (This arrangement of hair and 
beard was in the latest fashion of the period. ) 

Dowden says, 41: "It (the bust) presents a face 
powerful and full-blooded, rather than refined or 
subtle;" and adds, 42: "Besides the bust there is only 
one authenticated portrait of the great poet, that upon 
the title page of the First Folio." That is, in Mr. 



* Mr. Corbin, in the paper before quoted, says of the nose of 
the bust: "It is so short that the end is generally supposed 
to have been chipped off accidentally early in the carving, 
and the present apology for a nose carved out of what re- 
mained." Which is an ingenious way of accounting for one 
discrepancy between bust and print. What about the others, 
the hair, for example ? 



474 



SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. 



Dowden's opinion, the Droeshout portrait is one like- 
ness of Shaksper, and this bust is another. There is 
not one feature in common between the Droeshout 




and the bust. If one is a likeness the other can- 
not be. 

"This bust was carved by nobody knows whom, 
from nobody knows what, and nobody knows when; 
for the accepted statement that it was cut by Gerald 



THK IvIKKNE;SSB;S op WIIvWAM SHAKSPiER. 475 

Johnson, an Amsterdam 'Tombe-maker', can be traced 
to no historical source. " Morgan. "If Ben Jonson, 
knowing his friend William Shakspere to have been 
the martial and elegant looking gentleman the Strat- 
ford bust represents him, authorized the verses under 
the Droeshout engraving, it was a deliberate libel on 
his part, only perhaps to be explained by his secret 
enmity to William Shakspere." Id. 

Halliwell-Phillipps, 281, says: "The precise history 
of the bust is unknown", but he supposes it may 
have been made by a "tomb-maker" in London. "It 
was originally painted in imitation of life, the face and 
hands of the usual flesh color, the eyes a light hazel, 
and the hair and beard auburn. The realization of 
the costume was similarly attempted by the use of 
scarlet for the doublet, black for the loose gown, and 
white for the collar and wristbands. But colors on 
stone are only of temporary endurance, and not only 
had so large a portion of them disappeared in the lapse 
of a hundred and thirty years, but so much decay was 
observable in some parts of the efl&gy, that it was con- 
sidered advisable, in 1748, to have it entirely renovated. 
It is, of course, impossible at this day to assess the ex- 
tent of the mischief that may have been perpetrated on 
that occasion, but that it was very considerable may be 
inferred from a contemporary account of the directions 
given to the artist, who was instructed to 'beautify' as 
well as 'repair' , and to make the whole as like as pos- 
sible to what it was when first created. . . . In 1793, 
Malone persuaded the vicar to allow the whole of the 
bust to be painted in white. ' ' On this matter, it is well 
to hear Charles lyamb: "The wretched Malone could 



476 shakspe;r not shakespeiare;. 

not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of the Strat- 
ford Church to let him white- wash the painted effigy 
of old Shakespeare, which stood there, in rude but 
lively fashion, depicted to the very color of the cheek, 
the eye, the eye-brow, the very dress he used to wear 
— the only authentic testimony we had, however im- 
perfect, of those curious parts and parcels of him. 
They covered him over with a coat of white paint. 
By — , if I had been a justice of the peace for Warwick- 
shire, I would have clapt both commentator and sex- 
ton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling, sacri- 
legious varlets. ' ' 

Boaden' s copy, of course, gives the bust in its white 
phase. Mr. Phillipps adds: "It remained in this last 
mentioned (white) state for many years; but, in 1861, 
there was a second imitation of the original coloring. 
This step was induced by the seriously adverse criti- 
cism to which the operation of 1793 had been sub- 
jected; but although the action then taken has been 
so frequently condemned, it did not altogether oblite- 
rate the semblance of an intellectual human being, and 
this is more than can be said of the miserable travesty 
which now distresses the eye of the pilgrim. ' ' 

Drake, after telling us how the bust had been orig- 
inally colored, goes on: — "After remaining in this 
state above 120 years, Mr. John "Ward, grandfather of 
Mrs. Siddons and Mr. Kemble, caused it to be re- 
paired, and the original colors preserved, in 1784, from 
the profits of the representation of Othello. This was 
a generous, and apparently judicious act, and there- 
fore very unlike the next alteration it was subjected 
to, in 1793. In that year, Mr. Malone caused the 



'Th:^ LIKEjNE^SSElS OP* WlIvIvIAM SHAKSPE;r. 477 

bust to be covered with one or more coats of white 
paint, and thus at once destroyed its original char- 
acter, and greatly injured the expression of the face. 
Having absurdly characterized this expression for 
pertness, and therefore 'differing from that placid 
composure and thoughtful gravity so perceptible in 
his original portrait (the Droeshout), and his best 
prints' , Mr. Malone could have few scruples about in- 
juring or destroying it." 

Mr. Phillipps says: "The exact time at which the 
monument was erected in the church is unknown, but 
it is alluded to by I^eonard Digges as being there in 
the year 1623." This allusion is found in Digges' 
doggerel verses partly quoted before. 

" Shake-speare, at length thy pious fellowes give 
The world thy Workes; thy Workes, by which, out-live 
Thy Tombe, thy name must; when that stone is rent. 
And Time dissolves thy Stratford moniment. 
Here we alive shall view thee still." 

Mr. Phillipps proceeds: "Upon a rectangular tablet, 
placed below the bust, are engraved the following lines: 

' Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem 
Terra tegit, poptilus moeret, Olympus habet. 
Stay passenger, why goest thou so fast? 
Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast 
"Within this monument, Shakspeare, with whome 
Quick nature dide; whose name doth deck ys tombe 
Far more then cost; sith all yt he hath writt 
I/eaves living art but page to serve his witt. ' 

"It is not likely that these verses were composed 
either by a Stratfordian, or by any one acquainted with 
their destined position, for otherwise the writer could 



478 shakSpkR not shaksSpeJar:^. 

hardly have spoken of Death having placed Shak- 
speare 'within this monument'." 

Shaksper was buried under the floor of the church 
several feet away from the bust set in the wall. The 
tablet for aught that appears, may have been put up fifty 
years or more after the bust, and the verses were writ- 
ten by some one who got all his notions * of William 
Shakespeare from reading the Folio. No contempo- 
rary of "William Shakespeare" or William Shaksper, 
would have eulogized the author of the plays as hav- 
ing had the wisdom of Nestor, the wit of Socrates, 
and the art of Virgil, or would have said that when 
that poet died nature died with him; that sort of ap- 
preciation came generations after 1623. Nor would 
any one in that age have said that the world mourned 
for either Shakespeare or Shaksper. I have before 
shown that the world neither mourned for the player 
nor poet, nor cared anything about the latter, until a 
long period after 1623. 

As to the bust, this is doubtless how it came to be. 
Mortuary sculptors, time out of mind, have kept in 
stock an assortment of their wares, f You pay your 



* The first mention of this tablet inscription was by Mr. Dow- 
dall (Ingleby, 417) whose visit to Stratford church, and whose 
talk with the old sexton, I have elsewhere spoken of. This oc- 
curred on loth April, 1693, seventy years therefore later than 
the date of Digges' verses. Mr. Dowdall's words are: "Just 
under his effigies in the wall of the chancell is this written;" 
and he gives in full the inscription on the tablet. 

fWe read in Maspero's "Dawn of Civilization" respecting 
the tomb-makers of ancient Egypt: "The sculptors . . . 
like our modern tombstone makers, kept by them a tolerable 
assortment of half-finished statues, from which the purchaser 



rnn tiK:BNE;ss op wiicivIam shAksper. 479 

money and get your choice, be it statue, or shaft, or 
simple slab. This bust was ready to serve for any- 
thing or anybody, a hero of the wars, a I^ord Mayor, 
or an honest country gentleman; and the player's 
people caught at it. Sold to Mistress Hall by a 
drummer (Anglice, a bagman) probably. 

No. 5, the "Chandos Portrait", the best known of 
all, entirely unauthenticated, and unlike any other 
Shaksper portrait. This is the one that figures in 
the Hudson Shakespeare. 

I^ee says of this Chandos portrait, 292: "Its pedi- 
gree suggests that it was intended to represent the 
poet, but numerous and conspicuous divergences from 
the authenticated likenesses show that it was painted 
from fanciful descriptions of him some years after his 
death." 

No. 6, "The Zucharo Portrait" dismissed by Boaden 
as not painted from life; and not improbably did not 

could choose according to his taste. . . . When the family had 
made their choice, a few hotors work was sufficient to transform 
the rough sketch into a portrait, such as it was, of the deceased 
they desired to commemorate, a7td to arrange his garmeftt ac- 
cording to the latest fashion.'''' By which it appears that this 
custom, of the tomib-makers is a venerable one — say 6,000 years 
old. And so it happens that the Stratford bust resembles the 
man depicted in the Droeshout in about the same degree as the 
bust of the Sheik el-Beled (Maspero, 408) resembles the bust 
of Cheops. Indeed there is a strong family resemblance be- 
tween the bust of Stratford and that of the military Sheik. 
For my part, I regard the bust as a fraud, and the Droeshout as 
a caricature, and do not believe there exists a likeness of player 
Shaksper. Men in his walk of life were not in the habit of 
having their portraits painted. 



480 SHAESPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. 

originally claim to have been intended for Shaksper 
at all". 

No. 7, "The Jansen Portrait", unauthenticated.* 
"Thus it has taken an army of novelists, painters, en- 
gravers, and essayists, to erect simple William Shak- 
sper, of Stratford, into the god he ought to have 
been; and according to the Shakspereans themselves, 
there is only one portrait of him extant, which has 
even the assumed advantage of having been pro- 
nounced a likeness by any one who ever saw him in 
his Hfetime, the Droeshout picture. ' ' Morgan. 

Now comes the "death-mask," so much written 
of in late years. A plaster cast of an unnamed face is 
found in a rubbish shop in Germany, in 1849 — 233 
years after the player's death. It bears neither the 
name of the subject, nor of the maker, nor is 
there any clue to the nationality of either; but 
there is cut upon it the date 16 16, the year Shak- 
sper died. Who put that date there, or when it 
was put there, no one can tell. It may have been 
done fifty years ago — or one hundred — no one can say. 
But obviously the temptation to manufacture a death- 
mask of William Shaksper, who was supposed to have 
written the Shakespeare plays, was immense; as was 

■•■■ Shaksper is not the only Englishman, it seems, who has 
suffered from a surplusage of likenesses. Froude says of Fran- 
cis Drake: "The portraits of him vary much, as indeed it is 
natural they should, for most of those which pass for Drake 
were not meant for Drake at all. It is the fashion in this 
country, and a very bad fashion, when we find a remarkable 
portrait with no man's name attached to it, to christen it at 
random after some eminent man, and there it remains to per- 
plex and mislead." Eng. Seamen, 77. 



yhb^ i.iki:ne;sse;s op wii<IvIAm shakspbr. 481 

the temptation to find a book whicli the great man had 
personally handled — the Florio Montaigne. "The 
Shakspereans at once adopt this anonymous mask 
as taken from the face of the defunct William Shak- 
sper. Either he, at his death, was known to be an 
immortal bard, or he was not. If he was, how could 
the sole likeness moulded of departed greatness be 
smuggled away from the land that was pious to claim 
him as its most distinguished son, and nobody miss 
it, or raise the hue and cry? If it was not, to whose in- 
terest was it to steal the mask from the family who 
cared enough about the dead man's memory to go to 
the expense of it?" Morgan. 

The figure of this mask, given on the following 
page, is copied from Norris. 

The upholders of the genuineness of the mask pro- 
pound the theory that it- was made by the "tomb- 
maker", supposed, but without an iota of evidence, 
to have been Gerard Johnson, a man who, it seems, 
was living in London in 16 16; and that it was used 
by him in modeling the Stratford bust. It needs but 
a glance at bust and mask to show that they represent 
two individuals. For example, the long, thin, promi- 
nent and curved nose of the ma.sk would not have 
been represented in the bust by a short, thick, straight 
nose; the beetling brow of the mask would not have 
been represented in the bust by a brow entirely with- 
out prominence (in the Droeshout likeness there is 
actually an incurving there) ; the lofty and capacious 
forehead of the mask would not have been replaced in 
the bust by a forehead but moderately high, round and 
bullet .shaped. In fact, these three supposed like- 



482 



SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKESPKARK. 



nesses represent three distinct individuals, with three 
distinct types of faces. No wonder that Mrs. Dall says 
of this mask: "It is so much nobler and sweeter than 




any existing likeness of him, it looks so much more 
as we would have liked Shakspere to have looked, that 
we long to' have it proved." Alas! it cannot be 
proved, and the admirers of player Shaksper will 



"J^nn LIK^N^SS^S 01^ WlttlAM SHAKSP^R. 483 

have to content their souls with the Droeshout like- 
ness. 

Mr. Dowden says, 42: "The authenticity of the 
celebrated Kesselstadt death-mask is very doubtful, 
but we could wish that his noble and refined face was 
indeed that of Shakspere." The player was neither 
a noble man, nor a sweet and refined character, and 
why it should be expected that a genuine portrait of 
him should surpass the reality, I fail to see. 

Of this mask, Mr. Philhpps, I, 297, thus speaks: 
"But in like manner as there have arisen in these 
days critics, who, dispensing altogether with the old 
contemporary evidences, can enter so perfectly into 
all the vicissitudes of Shakespeare's intellectual tem- 
perament that they can authoritatively identify at a 
glance every line that he did write, and with equal 
precision, every sentence that he did not; — even so 
there are others to whom a picture's history is not of 
the slightest moment, their reflective instinct enabling 
them, without effort or investigation, to recognize in 
an old curiosity shop the dramatic visage that belonged 
to the author of Hamlet. I^owlier votaries can only 
bow their heads in silence. ' ' 

In an illustrated paper in "The Strand", lyondon, 
1894, hy Mr. Alexander Cargill, entitled "The Like- 
nesses of Shakespere' ' , is a figure of what the author 
calls "the best likeness" (so called on the /ucus a non 
lucendo principle, because it is no likeness at all); a 
copy of which is shown on the following page. 

This face looks like that of a junior partner in a 
dry goods store, bent on selling a bill of sundries. It 



484 



shae:spe;r not shake;spe;are;. 



purports to have been gotten up by I^ord Ronald 
Gower "for the Stratford Memorial which he pre- 
sented to the town of Stratford-on-Avon", and is com- 
posed from the bust and the death-mask spoken of. 




In the dapper salesman of thirty-five of this Me- 
morial, there is a very short upper lip (like neither 
the Droeshout, the bust, nor the mask), in the shape 
of Cupid's bow, a small pointed chin embedded in a 



THS LIKEN:eSSE;S OF WIHIAM SHAKSPEJR. 485 

clipped and pointed goatee, (in the Droeshout, the 
chin is broad and rounded like the big end of an egg) 
a long, thin, arched nose, arched throughout, (and 
not merely with a curve in the middle, followed by a 
depression, as in the mask), and deep set eyes (as in 
the mask, but not in the Droeshout or bust). The 
organs of perception are copied from the mask; and 
the top of the head has a great development of what 
phrenologists call the organ of firmness and self- 
esteem, not discoverable in the "only authentic like- 
ness. ' ' Being the historical man we know, the bump 
of acquisitiveness should have been as big as a walnut. 
This "best likeness" simply adds one more to the 
many counterfeit presentments of William Shaksper, 
player, manager, and money-lender. 

Somehow, forgeries and counterfeits spring up in 
all directions about this individual; forged signatures 
on fly-leaves, to make him out to have been a reading 
man; forged letters from persons of quality, to make 
it appear that he was intimate with ' ' divers of 
worship", (see a choice example in Dall,i43); counter- 
feit portraits, from the Chandos and Flower, to Rolf e' s 
noble boy; bogus death-masks; and all with the pur- 
pose of making it appear that he was not the simpleton 
the Droeshout portrait depicts him to have been. 
Wherever we strike him, we strike imposture and 
fraud. 



486 SHAKSPBR NOT SHAKEJSPEAR^. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

A SUGGESTION. 

Would it not be well for the followers of the Shak- 
sper cult to hold a congress in order to settle upon a 
uniform appraisement of the object of their venera- 
tion? One (Baynes) tells us that he (the author) 
was profoundly learned, by the evidence of the works 
themselves, and became so by the remarkable advan- 
tages of school, and good breeding, and cultivated 
society, he received in his youth, at Stratford. The 
next man (Halliwell-Phinipps, "the highest authority 
on the facts of William Shaksper's life"), declares 
all this to be a mistake, and that the player really was 
unlearned, had no school advantages, nor access to 
polite society in his youth; indeed, that all his asso- 
ciations at Stratford were low and vulgar; but that he 
must have gained a smattering of knowledge some- 
how, after he came to London, and there developed 
into "the bard of our admiration". 

Mr. Fleay tells us these plays could never have been 
written without much solitude, much suffering, and 
much concentration. Halliwell-Phillipps intimates 
that in his opinion they were written ' 'without effort, 
by inspiration, not by design' ' ; and, what would seem 
incompatible with a divine origin, that they were 
"written, first for a living, and then for affluence, 
with the sole aim of pleasing an audience, most of 
whom were not only illiterate, but unable to either 



A SUGGESTION. 487 

read or write." Dr. Ingleby says that "the drift of 
his plays was apparently intelligible to the penny- 
knaves of the theater, else they would not have been 
played, but that his profound reach of thought and 
his unrivaled knowledge of human nature were as far 
beyond the vulgar ken as the higher graces of his 
poetry;" and that "we are at length slowly rounding 
to a just estimate of his works." On the other hand, 
Richard Grant White, and John Fiske, assert that the 
plays were dashed off merely to fill the theater and 
the player's pockets. 

The lamented Lowell says: "Whatever we have 
gathered of thought, of knowledge, and of experience, 
compared with his (Shakespeare's) marvelous page, 
shrinks to a mere foot-note." His successor in the 
lecturer's chair, Wendell, on the contrary, tells us 
that ' 'nothing more surprises such readers of Shake- 
speare as are not practical men of letters than the 
man's apparent learning;" and that "his learning is 
no longer a marvel, except to those who insist on 
finding it so." 

Point out that Mr. Ruggles has demonstrated that 
the author was in close touch with Bacon, whose phi- 
losophy underlies each and all of the plays; and one 
of the self-constituted custodians of player Shaksper's 
literary reputation replies that he allows both the 
learning and philosophy, but "if there were any in- 
debtedness it was not on the side of Shakespeare; that 
Bacon must have had time to be a spectator of the 
plays . . . and have drawn from them many of 
the thoughts w^hich helped to perfect his system;" 
and,'anyhow, Shakespeare (author and player) "knew 



488 SHAKSPSR NOT SHAKKSPKAR:^. 

more than Bacon of the actual objects of scientific 
investigation, of men, of animals, and plants, and of 
the universe as a whole." Verily, the book reviewer 
of the New York Tribune said this in the issue of 
April 26, 1895. 

Very probable indeed, that Francis Bacon, "the 
high-priest of Nature", the man "whose claim to un- 
disputed empire over men's thoughts has been ratified 
by the concurrent testimony of ages and nations" — 
the man who wrote at thirty-one, "I have taken all 
knowledge to be my province" — of whom Macaulay 
says, "He, without effort, takes in at once all the do- 
mains of science — all the past, the present and the 
future;" moreover, one of the most eloquent speakers, 
and most learned lawyers of his age, and, later, lyord 
Chancellor of England — was in the habit of passing 
his afternoons at a public theater, in order to draw 
from the interludes played there "the thoughts which 
helped to perfect his system"! Was he one of the 
penny groundlings, or was he permitted to enjoy a 
stool on the stage: — the ample and luxurious stage, as 
it appears in De Witt's picture — among the men of 
rank and fashion, whose lackeys "supply them with 
pipes of tobacco", who "play cards and insult the pit", 
and whose nostrils are offended with the pervading 
stenches that ascend from the rabble, till the cry 
arises, ' 'burn the juniper' ' ; or had he a share of a bench 
in the galleries among the pimps and prostitutes, and 
the masked ladies ? 

I imagine the grave and dignified Francis Bacon, as 
I can imagine William Gladstone, watching for the 
gobbets of wisdom as they tumbled from the mouths 



A SUGGESTION. 489 

of carpenter Burbage, butcher Shaksper, and grocer 
Heminge. "Anyhow, Shakespeare" (supposed to be 
that butcher) "knew more than Bacon of the actual 
objects of scientific investigation, of men, of animals 
and plants, and of the universe as a whole." What 
an amazing man Shaksper must have been in the view 
of our critic! What was he a hireling at that theater 
for — that theater, "the centre of organized vice," the 
"antechamber to the neighboring brothels," making 
mouths at, and prancing to, the groundlings of the 
pit? Why was he not in his proper place, enthroned, 
surrounded by the poets, .scholars, and philosophers of 
England? That won't do; like to like; learned men 
seek learned men, triflers seek triflers.* 

* This remarkable charge that Bacon borrowed from Shake- 
speare is not original with the Tribune critic. Massey, in his 
book on the Sonnets, runs through several pages in this fashion: 
"Personally, I have sometimes thought there was something 
conscious, not to say sinister, in the silence of Bacon respecting 
Shakespeare, whom he must have known as "Ca^ friend of South- 
ampton, the friend of Essex, the friend of Bacon. ... As 
Spedding points out. Bacon had a regular system of taking 
notes, and of intentionally altering the things that he quoted. 
. . . This opens a vast vista of responsibility in his covert 
mode of assimilating the thoughts, purloining the gold, and 
clipping the coinage of Shakespeare. . . . Bacon, as a fre- 
quenter of the theater with Essex and Southampton and other 
of the 'private friends'' who are described as spending their time 
in seeing plays, must have appreciated the presence of that 
genius which had arisen to enrich the stage with I^ove's I/abour 's 
Lost. ... It has often been a matter of surprise that 
Bacon should not have recognized Shakespeare or his work. 
Btd now we know that he did. . . . As we have seen it was 
his practice to make notes at the theater, or to jot down from 



490 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKElSPB^ARE. 

He (author) was learned; he (player) was un- 
learned; he (author) had the most original mind in 
the universe; he (player) was a mere smatterer, a 
picker-up of other men's good things. He (author) 
was of transcendent genius, inspired; he (player) had 
the misfortune to live outside of Harvard, and "his 
learning is no longer a marvel" to some of us who 
know what's what, It used to be a marvel in lyowell's 
time, but we now are wiser than he was, by many 
degrees. 

memory the remarkable things that arrested his attention there. 
His Promus is the record of much that he took directly from 
Shakespeare. For eight or ten years he had free play and full 
pasturage in Shakespeare's field before he published his first ten 
essays. , . . It is this borrowing from Shakespeare by Bacon 
that has given so much trouble and labor in vain to the Bacon- 
ians. . . . The simple solution is that. Bacon was the un- 
suspected thief, who has been accredited with the original own- 
ership of the property purloined by Shakespeare. ... A 
vast deal of Shakespeare's thought must have gone into Bacon'' s 
sweating-bag or melting-pot, which is not to be recovered or 
recognized by any familiar features or quotation marks." 

I hope Mr. Massey rested more comfortably after having dis- 
charged all this bilious vaaAXsx—foedissima ventris proluvies. 



the; summing up. 491 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE SUMMING UP. 

I undertook to show that the player, William Shak- 
sper, could not possibly have been the author of the 
poems and plays which issued under the name of Will- 
iam Shakespeare, and, if the facts I have cited here are 
true, and the highest Shaksperean authorities assert 
them to be true, I have proved my case. 

It was impossible that such a man as the author of 
these works must have been, by the evidence of the 
works themselves, could have sprung from a race who, 
in all their generations, had been ignorant and illit- 
erate, or could have lived in a bookless neighborhood 
till his majority, without one elevating influence, and 
afterwards attained even respectability as an author or 
man of learning. 

It was impossible that a youth so born and bred 
should, in two to five j^ears, or any number of years, 
in the low and vagabond profession he drifted into, 
have acquired the learning, or the language, or the 
experience, necessary for writing such poems as Venus 
and Adonis, or any one of the Shakespeare plays; that, 
under these disadvantages, he should have written two 
score plays in rapid succession — of the entire series, 
the first discovering as much learning, familiarity with 
ancient and modern languages, acquaintance with the 
world, as the last. Plainly, he was a thoroughly 
equipped man when he wrote his first play. 



492 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKEjaPKAR:^. 

It was impossible that such a youth, in two to seven, 
or any number of years, leading the kind of life he 
did, and coming to London equipped with nothing but 
the patois of Warwickshire, should have acquired a 
vocabulary estimated at from 15,000 to 21,000 words; 
or that, under the same conditions, he should have 
"amalgamated and consubstantiated" the Latin lan- 
guage with his native thought. 

It was impossible that, under the same conditions, 
he should have acquired Italian, Spanish and French; 
that he should have become learned in all the known 
sciences, in all philosophy, in law and in medicine. 

It was impossible, being the son of John Shaksper, 
and reared as he was, that he could have grown up 
with any knowledge of the English Bible; or that, 
being the man he was, he should have gained a knowl- 
edge of it after he came to London — and, in fact, 
amalgamated the language of the Bible with his native 
thought. 

It was impossible that a youth so bom and nurtured 
could have conceived the female characters of these 
plays; that he could have had any knowledge of courts, 
the language and behavior of kings and queens, of 
ladies, or of cultivated people. 

It was impossible that the author of these works, if 
he lived, and studied, and wrote, and at the same time 
was a player at, and manager of, a theater in London, 
a city of scarcely more than half the population that 
Washington has to-day, could have been unknown to 
other literary men of the time; that in an age of dia- 
ries, and correspondence, and pamphlets, vast stores 
of which have been preserv^ed, and are accessible to 



THB SUMMING UP. 493 

Students, and which abound in the gossip of the day, 
in anecdotes and allusions to every man of eminence in 
every department; that in the papers and letters of the 
great families where the player was "petted and 
courted," according to his modern worshipers, — South- 
ampton, Rutland, Essex, Montgomery, or of Raleigh, 
Cecil, Coke, Tobie Mathew, and multitudes of other let- 
ter writers then living, — there should not be one men- 
tion of him. ' 'He was unknown to the men of that age, ' ' 
not merely to those enumerated, but to "any other of 
less note among the statesmen, scholars and artists, 
except the few of his fellow-craftsmen. ' ' So Ingleby 
and Richard Grant White declare, and they state the 
fact. 

It was impossible that the author of these works 
should have returned to his native place, lived there 
and died there, and left no tradition or testimony as 
to his literary labors; that he should have left no 
library — not even a book-case or a writing desk — no 
books, no manuscripts, no writings of any description; 
that his last Will, a Will "of great particularity," the 
Will of a man who valued property, should have no 
mention of what possessed a large money value, namely, 
books, and the manuscripts of the plays in question, 
if he really possessed them. 

It was impossible that a man of such amazing eru- 
dition should not have valued knowledge and learning, 
and should have been wholly indifferent to the educa- 
tion of his children. 

It is impossible that such learning, such vast accom- 
plishments, should have been domiciled at Stratford, 
and no memory of it reach the next generation. His 



494 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. 

sister, Joan Hart, lived for thirty years after his death, 
or to 1646; his daughters Susanna and Judith until 
1649 and 1662; his grand-daughter, I^ady Barnard, 
until 1670; hundreds of persons who had known him 
personally, or whose fathers had known him, were liv- 
ing in the last part of the century, when literary Eng- 
land had become alive to the importance of preserving 
every item respecting so illustrious a man; and yet the 
result of all investigation was, "we never knew or 
heard anything of William Shaksper except as a poor 
boy who lived in this town, ran away, came back a 
rich man, and bought New Place. Concerning plays 
or writings of any sort, we know nothing. ' ' 



As to the kind of man the player was, I look upon 
him as a hard, griping, conscienceless, remorseless 
man, piling up his ducats, devoted to that alone — ''A 
tyger's heart wrapped in a player's hyde." Certainly 
I would as lief have had Shylock for my creditor as 
William Shaksper. Ratsie's Ghost, published in 1605, 
gives some parting advice to a young player, telling 
him to go to London, ' 'where he would learn to be fru- 
gal and thrifty; to feed upon all men, but let none 
feed on him; make his hand a stranger to his pocket; 
his heart slow to perform his tongue's promise; and 
when he felt his purse well lined, to buy some piece of 
lordship in the country; that, growing weary of play 
ing, his money may bring him to dignity and reputation; 
that he need not care for no man — no, not for them 
that before made him proud with speaking their words 



the; summing up. ' 495 

on the stage." (Their words, not his own, be it 
noted, ) 

This is one of the few mentions, before spoken of, 
by the player's contemporaries, testifying to him as a 
man, and accepted by all the commentators as unques- 
tionably referring to Shaksper. 

On the player's retirement to Stratford, he continued 
his business of loaning money, prosecuting his debtors 
even unto prison, (his neighbors, always poor men). 
Richard Grant White, though his ardent worshiper, is 
compelled to cry out: "The pursuit of an impoverished 
man for the sake of imprisoning him, and depriving 
him both of the power of paying his debts and sup- 
porting himself and family, is an incident in Shak- 
spere' s life which it requires the utmost allowance and 
consideration for the practice of the time and country 
to enable us to contemplate with equanimity — satis- 
faction is impossible. ' ' 

Evidently, some of the player's acquaintances did 
not regard him as the "gentle Shakespeare", as Ben 
Jonson satirically characterized him. 

The failure to educate his children is evidence of 
penuriousness as well as of paternal negligence; his 
failure to assist his father, and his utter neglect of his 
wife is further evidence of penuriousness; so also is his 
charging the corporation of Stratford with the cost of 
two quarts of wine furnished to a preacher at his own 
house. 

The Shaksperean biographers tell us that these 
plays were not written for the love of singing, but for 
money, to fill his pockets and to get on in the world. 
Mrs. Dall says he sang like a bird, because he could 



496 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKESPKARH. 

not help singing. He lisped in numbers, for the num- 
bers came. Not at all: "At the expense of investing 
him with a sordid disposition' ' , as Dr. Ingleby puts 
it, he sang for pelf alone; that is, of course, if he were 
the author of the plays, which I deny. 

To sum up, in the words of one who has weighed 
his character well, William Shaksper was a drunkard, 
a poacher, a liar, litigious, an oppressor of the poor, 
an unfaithful husband, an adulterer, and a negligent 
father. There is not recorded of him one noble ac- 
tion. 

The pen-picture of one of Sir Walter Besant's charac- 
ters agrees exactly with my idea of player and manager 
Shaksper: "He looked the kind of man who feels 
really happy when he sits in a bar parlor with a glass 
of something hot, and a few congenial companions; 
one of those who laugh like ten men over the choice 
quips and delicate stories and deftly turned epigrams 
with which the evening would be enlivened; one who 
would be popular with these tavern friends; and whose 
popularity would be in no way lessened by the knowl- 
edge that he spent his business hours in overreaching 
his clients, besting his friends, grinding the noses of 
the poor, and exacting the letter of his bond." Be- 
hold the man! 

This man came to London with no polished accom- 
plishments — "almost destitute of them", according to 
Halliwell-Phillipps. He never learned to write, and 
no one can say with knowiedge that he ever learned to 
read, for there is not the least evidence that he ever 
went to school or received instruction; and no one has 
recorded having ever seen him with a book in his 



TH:e SUMMING UP. 497 

hand. He died with as few polished accomplishments 
as he had when he entered lyondon, without a book or 
a paper, with plenty of money and nothing else, un- 
lamented by any one and known to nobody. 

That is the sort of man William Shaksper, player 
and money-lender, was. 

"Knew you ever a scholar whose soul had utterly 
escaped the softening influence of thought and study ?" 



Who, then, did write the "Shakespeare" plays? 

It has been the habit of the Shakspereans to scout, 
and rage at, the suggestion that Francis Bacon, or his 
brother Anthony, had a hand in them, on the ground 
that these men had not the poetical faculty, nor the 
technical skill to compose plays; though, without one 
scrap of evidence, they assure us that William Shak- 
sper had an excess of both technical skill and poetical 
faculty. Knowing nothing about him, they claim 
everything for him. 

And yet the critical Dr. Brandes tells us that "the 
characteristic of the period was the immense rush of 
productivity in the direction of dramatic art. Every 
Bnglishman of Elizabeth's time could write a tolerably 
good play, just as every second Greek in the age of 
Pericles could model a tolerably good statue, or, as 
every European of to-day can write a passable news- 
paper article. ' ' 

Then, as if to give poor Erancis Bacon a chance, 
Professor Wendell discovers that the world has all 
along been under a mistake as to the power and sig- 
nificance of these plays; that, given the habit of 



498 SHAKSPBR NOT SHAKKSPEJARB). 

writing, and a certain trick of expression, and a few 
compendiums and Elizabethan histories, and Coke 
upon Ivittleton, the plays are not so remarkable as the 
uninitiated have thought. Moreover, to show how 
very easy it must have been in Elizabeth's time to 
compose a Shakespeare play, the Professor has tried 
his own hand, and enriched the language with 
"Raleigh in Guiana." It would seem then to 
humbler individuals that possibly either one of the 
writers named, and some score others, might have 
worked on the Shakespeare plays without violence to 
probability. I would suggest that searchlights be 
turned on the judicious Hooker, or the worthy Donne, 
or the learned Coke, or Tobie Matthew, or I^ord 
Burleigh himself. One and all apparently had the 
habit of writing and the trick of expression. 

Or, if these names are not satisfactory, give a 
thought to the many acknowledged play-writers of 
that age, university men, who wrote singly, or in 
collaboration — Daniel, Marlowe, Greene, and the rest. 
Look for peculiarities in the vocabularies of the recog- 
nized works of these authors ; words, lines, or sen- 
tences, identical with anything in the Shakespeare 
plays; traces of thought akin to what is found in 
these plays. For Hamlet, and some of the greatest, 
I would suggest that a writer possessing the require- 
ments of Professor Wendell be looked for; one who 
had access to a "library of compendiums and his- 
tories"; one who had some knowledge of Coke on 
Littleton; but above all, one with "a concrete habit of 
thought and phrase," whatever that may mean. Or, 
a writer possessing the requirements of Ruggles, one 



the; summing up. 499 

"thoroughly familiar with the Baconian Philosophy"; 
one "who was a philosopher first and then a poet;" 
one of "bold innovating genius;" one who "obtained 
his conceptions by study and meditation." When 
found, make a note of. Or a writer possessing the re- 
quirements of Mr. Fleay; one "accustomed to soli- 
tude;" one "who had suffered much;" one "capable 
of great concentration"; sure signs of the real au- 
thor, Mr. Fleay asserts. It is possible that such 
writers may be found, if sought for; and when found, 
it will be seen that they are natural and sensible men, 
not inspired dunces. For myself, I prefer the myriad- 
minded Shakespeare of Coleridge and John Owens to 
the Shaksper of Halliwell-Phillipps, and Ingleby, 
and Wendell; "the profound, original thinker and 
reasoner;" the man who had "acquired his intimate 
knowledge of the Hamletic type of intellect from in- 
introspection" , to anything in the line of money- 
grubber, beer-guzzler, variety-show clown and man- 
ager, who spent twenty-five years of his life in cater- 
ing to the rabble of I^ondon. 



INDKX. 



Acherly, Thomas, allusion, 278. 
Actors were individual wanderers, 50, 

51- . . 

Archer,William, on the play of Edward 

III, 58. 
Arden, Robert, inventory of goods, 13. 
Arden, Mary, her life in girlhood, 13. 
Authors, life — style of, 69. 

Bacon, Dr. Leonard, on the social sta- 
tion of the planters of New England, 
18. 

Bacon, Francis, ignorance of Shake- 
speare, 287. 

Baker, Sir Richard, mention of player 
Shaksper, 292, 

Barnfeild, Richard, mention of Shake- 
speare, 271. 

Barnfeild, Richard, speaks of Shake- 
speare as poet, but not as play-writer, 

325- 

Basse, William, lines on William Shake- 
speare, 292. 

Baynes, Dr., on Shakespeare's use of 
certain words, 203. 

Baynes, Dr., on the imagined curricu- 
lum at Stratford school, 429. 

Baynes, Dr., on Venus and Adonis and 
its motto from Ovid, 78. 

Baynes, Dr., on Venus and Adonis 
and Lucrece, all thoroughly Ovid- 
ian, 86. 

Baynes, Dr., on William Shakespeare's 
proficiency in the classics, 441. 

Bell, Sir Charles, on the medical knowl- 
edge of the Shakespeare plays, 225. 

Blackfriars Theater, loi. 

Blackfriars Theater, no proof that W. 
Shaksper ever acted at, loi. 

Bodenham, John, mention of Shake- 
speare, 262. 

Bolton, Edmund, cites Shakespeare, 280 

Bolton, Edmund, enumerates poets, 322. 

Books, absence of, at Stratford, 21. 

Books, cumbrous and costly in Shake- 
speare's day, 214. 

Boston Public Library version of the 
three will signatures, 396. 

Boy of Stratford, cut, 26. 

Brandes, Dr. George, evidence that 
the author of the Shakespeare plays 
had traveled on the continent, 238. 



Brandes, Dr. George, on the rush of 
productivity in the direction of dra- 
matic art in Elizabeth's time, 497. 

Brandes, Dr. George, on William Shake- 
speare's familiarity with high life, 246. 

Brown, David Paul, on the knowledge 
of medical jurisprudence shown in the 
plays, 226. 

Bucknill, J. C, M.D., on the medical 
knowledge of the Shakespeare plays, 
224. 

Bunyan, John, his early education, 44. 

Burns, Robert, his early education, 43, 

44- 
Burr, Wm. H., proof that Shaksper 

could not write, 408. 
Burritt, Elihu, his early education, 46. 
Burton, Robert, introducing his pseudo 

likeness, 319. 
Eyington, Dr., on the Puritans who 

came to Massachusetts, i8. 

Camden, William, enumerates poets, 

323- 
Campbell, Lord Chief Justice, on the 

legal language used in the plays, 221. 
Campbell, Lord Chief J.istice, opinion 

of the justices' courts at Stratford, 

220. 
Carew, Richard, mentions Shakespeare, 

74- 
Carew, Richard, praise of Sidney, 321. 
Carlyle, Thomas, on early culture, 42. 
Centurie of Prayse, The, 3, 259. 
"Chaffed the Players," — an example, 

103. 
Chamberlain's Company, travels 

through England, 135, 136. 
Chamberlain, John, absence of men- 
tion of Shaksper in correspondence, 

414. 
Chettle, Henry, author of " Kind 

Heart's Dream," 276; his apology for 

Robert Green, 276. 
Clark, Mrs. Cowden, on the language 

of Shakespeare, 210. 
Clark, Prof. N. G., on the language of 

Shakespeare, 210. 
Coleridge, Hartley, on the classical 

allusions of Shakespeare, 199. 
Coleridge, Samuel T., Shakespeare as a 

philosopher, 226. 

(Soi) 



502 



INDEIX. 



Collier, J. P., his dishonesty exposed, 
132. 

Collier, J. P., on the Elizabethan thea- 
ters, 98. 

Collier, on the publication of the Pas- 
sionate Pilgrim, 73. 

Corbin, John, on Jonson's lines, intro- 
ducing the Droeshout likeness, 318. 

Corbin, John, on the Flower portrait, 
470. 

Craik, Prof. George L., on the language 
of Shakespeare, 210. 

Craik, G. L., on popular education in 
the reign of Elizabeth, 447. 

Craik, on the Prefatory Address to the 
Folio, 351, 357. 

Craik, on the universality of Shake- 
speare, 211. 

Crosse, probable reference to William 
Shaksper, 289. 

Cunningham, P., his forgeries, 130, 133, 
134. 

Dall, Mrs., conviction that Shaksper 
spent some years on the continent, 
238. 

Dall, Mrs. Caroline, on Chettle's words, 
277. 

Dall, Mrs., on Shaksper's distinguished 
friends, 417. 

Dall, Mrs., on William Shaksper's social 
station, 18. 

Davies, John, of Hereford, allusions to 
player Shaksper, 268. 

Davies, John, possible allusions to same, 
269, 270. 

Demonstration, the, i. 

Description of the horse in Venus and 
Adonis borrowed from Du Bartas, 85. 

Desk, at Stratford, shown as William 
Shaksper's, 30. 

Dickens, Charles, on the life of Shak- 
sper, 264. 

Digges, Leonard, on plays at the Globe 
Theater, 136. 

Digges, Leonard, prefatory lines, 360. 

Digges, Leonard, on Romeo and Juliet, 
162. 

Disraeli, Benj., on certain practises of 
the booksellers, 318. 

Disraeli, Benj., on the Prefatory Ad- 
dress to the Folio, 353. 

Donnelly, L, on Shaksper's Will, 382. 

Donnelly, Ignatius, on the gulf between 
the quality and the common people in 
Shaksper's time, 70. 

Donnelly, L, on the Shakespeare vo- 
cabulary, 197. 

Doran, Dr., on the versions of the 
Shakespeare plays after the Resto- 
ration, 333. 

Dowdall, Rev. Mr., result of his in- 
quiries at Stratford, 423. 



Dowden, Edward, LL.D., on the Eliza^ 
bethan theater, 07. 

Dowden, Dr., on the Prefatory Address 
to the Folio, 356. 

Drake, Dr. Nathan, on paucity of al- 
lusions to vicinity of Stratford in the 
plays, 432. 

Drake, on the rights of author and 
owner of a play, 76. 

Drake, on the exhibitions at the thea- 



ters, 119. 
Drake, on the 



e scrivener signing the first 

sheet of a will, 404. 
Drummond, William, his character of 

Ben Jonson, 348. 
Drummond, William, notes on Jonson's 

remarks on Shakespeare, 340. 
Dryden, John, on the Shakespeare 

plays, 329. 
Dumb-shows popular towards 1587, 100, 

161. 

Emerson, R.W., on the genius of Shake- 
speare, 227. 

Emerson, R. W., on the language of 
Shakespeare, 210. 

Evelyn, John, on certain Shakespeare 
plays, 328. 

Field, Dr., on the medical knowledge 
of the Shakespeare plays, 225. 

Fiske, John, denies the book learning 
of Shakespeare, 212. 

Fiske, John, estimation of the legal 
knowledge of the Shakespeare plays, 
221. 

Fleay, F. G., on Jonson's lines prefixed 
to the First Folio, 306. 

Fleay, Shaksper unmentioned by con- 
temporaries, 415. 

Fleay, on Shaksper's will, 381. 

Fleay, on the absence of allusions to 
Shakespeare, 286. 

Fleay, on the Elizabethan theaters, 98, 

99- 

Fleay, on the superiority of the second 
quarto of Hamlet to the Folio copy, 78. 

Fleay, the origin of the play houses and 
playing companies, gg. 

Forged signature in Florio Montaigne, 
411. 

Forman, Dr. Simon, account of per- 
formance of Cymbeline, 159. 

Forman, account of performance of 
Macbeth, 156. 

Forman, account of performance of The 
Winter's Tale, 159. 

Forman, his account of the performing 
of three Shakespeare plays, 153. 

Freeman, Thomas, lines on Shake- 
speare. 281. 

Free school, at Stratford, supposed sys- 
tem of instruction, 20. 



iNDKX. 



503 



Free school at Stratford, the annual 

charge for, 22. 
Fuller, on the imaginary wit-combats, 

etc., 361. 
Furuivall, Dr. J. C, Fresh allusions to 

Shakespeare, 261. 
Furnivall, on Gervinus' studies of 

Shakespeare, 226. 

Galton, Dr. Francis, on heredity, 41. 
Globe Theater, built in 1599, 107. 
Goadby, Dr., on the instruction of the 
common people in Shaksper's day, 

445- 
Goethe, on Shakespeare as a writer and 

psychologist, 230. 
GoUancz, Israel, on Othello, 134. 
GoUancz, Israel, on the Lear of Shake- 
speare, 149. 
Gollancz, on the Quarto of Romeo and 

Juliet, 77. 
Gosson, on the London theaters, 112. 
Green, J. R., on the last dramas of 

Shakespeare, 375. 
Greene, on Shakespeare's proficiency 

in the science of Heraldry, 235. 
Greene, Robert, complaint against an 

upstart-crow, etc. — Phillipps and In- 

gleby thereon, 54, 55. 
Greene, Robert, lines believed to have 

been aimed at player Shaksper, 297. 
Greene, Robert, on the upstart-crow, 

273- 
Greene, Robert, his Groatsworth of 

Wit, 275. 
Greenwich Fair, play at, 142. 
Grosart, Alexander B., his opinion of 

Shaksper, 297. 
Guilpin, Edward, among poets omits 

to name Shakespeare, 324. 

Hall, Dr., mentions death of Shaksper 
in his note-book, 424. 

Hallam, on Shakespeare phrases, 201. 

Halliwell-Phillipps, as to how the 
Shakespeare plays came to be writ- 
ten, 231. 

Halliwell-Phillipps, on Shaksper's con- 
dition when he made his will, 380. 

Halliwell-Phillipps, on Shaksper's will, 

383- 
Halliwell-Phillipps, on the popularity 

of ist Henry VI, 161; of Romeo and 

Juliet, 162. 
Halliwell-Phillipps, the Elizabethan 

theater, 96. 
Halliwell-Phillipps, on the theaters, iii, 

112. 
Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, 2. 
Hall's Chronicle not in John Shaksper's 

house, 21. 
Hamilton, Alexander, on genius, 460. 
Hamlet, on the capacity of the ground- 
lings; 125. 



Hamlet, ridicule of the style of playing 
in vogue, 126. 

Hamlet, the play of, exists in three 
forms, 145. 

Hathaway, Ann, her cottage; Richard 
Grant White on same, 17. 

Hazlitt, William, on Love's Labour's 
Lost, 63. 

Heard, F. F., on Shakespeare as a law- 
yer, 223 

Heine, on the historical value of the 
Shakespeare plays, 234. 

Heminge and Condell, 350. 

Henslowe's Diary; the prices paid for 
new plays, i8i. 

Henslowe, Philip, description of, 120. 

Henslowe, diary of, 71. 

Haywood, Thomas, mention of Shak- 
sper, 288. 

Heywood, Thomas reference to the 
author of the Shakespeare plays, 
270. 

Holmes, Judge, on the Sonnets, 372. 

Holmes, Judge, on Shakespeare's use 
of certain words, 202. 

Holmes, Dr. O. W., on a child's train- 
ing, 41- . 

Hume, David, on William Shake- 
speare, 332. 

Ingleby, Dr. C. J., on absence of allu- 
sions to Shakespeare, ignorance of 
contemporaries as to Shakespeare, 282. 

Ingleby, on the estimation of the plays 
of Shakespeare. 146. 

Ingleby, on the prefatory address to 
the Folio, 352, 353, 356. 

Ingleby, on the social standing of play- 
ers, 81. 

Impertinence, on the, of the assump- 
tion that William Shaksper conceived 
the female characters of the plays, 
244. 

Jaggard, William, publishes The Pas- 
stonate Pilgrim as Shakespeare's, 72. 

Johnson, Judge Jesse, on the Sonnets, 
366. 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, criticism on the 
Shakespeare plays, 331. 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, on the condition 
of the lower classes, 12, 22. 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, on the condition 
of the common people in Shake- 
speare's day, 153. 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, on the number of 
copies of the first two Folio editions 
of the plays, 334. 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, on William Shak- 
sper's first employments in Lon- 
don, 50. 

Jonson's Bartholomew Fair; how class- 
ical plays were travestied, 122. 



504 



IND^X. 



Jonson, Ben, apostrophe to player 
Shaksper, 336. 

Jonson, Ben, does not speak of " Shake- 
speare" in his Discoveries, 346. 

Jonson, Ben, his insincerity, 339. 

Jonson, Ben, his lines eulogizing the art 
of Shakespeare, 341. 

Jonson, Ben, his praises of Francis 
Bacon, 345. 

Jonson, Ben, his ridicule of plays of 
Shakespeare, 327. 

Jonson, Ben, his "Timber, or Discov- 
eries, 344. 

Jonson, Ben, lines introducing the por- 
trait in the First Folio, 317. 

Jonson, Ben, lines on Poet-Ape believed 
to be aimed at Player Shaksper, 
295. 

Jonson, Ben, lines prefixed to the First 
Folio, 304. 

Jonson, Ben, mention of player Shak- 
sper, 346. 

Jonson's Poetaster, attack on the 
King's Company. 116. 

Kempe, or Kemp, William, cut of, 60. 

King Henry VI, the work of Marlowe; 
also the Richard IH and other 
plays, 56, 57. 

Knight, Charles, his life of Shake- 
speare, ig. 

Knight, Charles, on Shakespeare's use 
of certain words, 202. 

Knight, Charles, on the "corrections, 
etc., of the Second Quarto of Romeo 
and Juliet, 77. 

Knight, Charles, on Romeo and 
Juliet, 140. 

Knight, Charles, on the Roman plays 
of Shakespeare, 120, 199. 

Knight, Charles, on the Quartos, 358. 

Knight, Charles, on Troilus and Cres- 
sida, 149. 

Lamb, Charles, on the Tragedies of 
Shakespeare, 147. 

Lee, Sidney, accounts for the learning 
in the law of the Shakespeare 
plays, 219. 1 

Lee, Sidney, his copy of the three Will 
signatures, 400. 

Lee, Sidney, on Love's Labour's 
Lost, 63. 

Lee, Sidney, on Shaksper's Will, 381 

Lee, Sidney, on the publication of the 
16 Quartos, 72. 

Lee, Sidney, on William Shaksper's in- 
difference to piracy of the Shake- 
speare plays, 77. 

Legal papers, latitude allowed in ex- 
ecuting, 403. 

Libraries, no public libraries in Shake- 
speare's day; private, very rare, 214. 

Lincoln, Abraham, his early educa- 
tion, 45. 



Lodge, Thomas, among poets omits to 

name Shakespeare, 324. 
Lord Mayor to Privy Council, on the 

London theaters, iii. 
Lord Strange's Company, 108. 
Love's Labour's Lost, the first of the 

Shakespeare plays performed, 62. 

Macaulay, Thomas B., on books in 
Shakespeare's day, on the use of 
Latin in the i6th century, 215. 

Madden, Judge, on Shakespeare's ac- 
curacy in the use of the language of 
Falconry, 235. 

Malone, Edmund, his fac-simile of the 
three Will signatures, 394. 
The same, enlarged, 395. 
Letters of, much enlarged, 398. 

Malone, Edmund, investigations as to 
William Shaksper, 90. 

Malone, Edmund, on Shaksper's 
Will, 382. 

Malone, Edmund, on the forged Ireland 
letters, 79. 

Malone, Edmund, on the Walker deed 
and mortgage, 386. 

Manningham, John, account of the per- 
formance of Twelfth Night, 153, 154. 

Manningham, John, relates gossip con- 
cerning Shaksper, 266. 

Marlowe, Christopher, his 'contribu- 
tions to the Shakespeare plays, 59. 

Marsh, George P., on the language of 
Shakespeare, 211. 

Marsh. George P., on the vocabulary 
of the Shakespeare works, 196. 

Mary's letter from California, 349. 

Massey, Gerald, on Francis Bacons 
obligation to Shakespeare, 489. 

Massey, Gerald, on the Sonnets, 368. 

Meiklejohn, Prof J. M. D., on the 
language of Shakespeare, 211. 

Meiklejohn, Prof., on the varied knowl- 
edge of the author of the Shakes- 
peare plays, 243. 

Meres, Francis, attributes twelve plays 
to Shakespeare, 74. 

Meres, Francis, enumerates poets, 321. 

Meres, Francis, mentions of Shake- 
speare, 279, 280. 

Mermaid, The, Shaksper not a mem- 
ber of that club, 362. 

Milton, John, an Epitaph, 299. 

Milton, John, lines on L'AUegro, 300. 

Milton, John, his early education, 41. 

Montague, Mrs., on Shakespeare as a 
moral philosopher, 217. 

Morgan, Dr. A., on instruction of chil- 
dren in Wm. Shaksper's time, 23. 

Morgan, Dr., on the Stationer's Com- 
pany, and the rights of printers, 353. 

Morgan, Dr., on Venus and Adonis; 
absence of Warwickshire patois in 
same, 83. 



INDBX. 



505 



Naylor, Edward W., on Shakespeare's 
acquaintance with music, 235. 

O'Connor, W. D., on the Sonnets, 369. 
Othello, based on Cinthio's novel, 311. 
Owens, John, on Hamlet, 231-233. 

Pepys, Samuel, on Shakespeare plays, 
328. 

Percy, Dean, on certain practices of the 
booksellers' 319. 

Performances at Court, 166, 168. 

Players, status of in reign of Eliza- 
beth, 80. 

Plays first printed in the Folio, 310. 

Plays bearing the same name as certain 
Shakespeare plays, 128-130. 

Plays, in the last half of the sixteenth 
century, were generally written in 
collaboration, 70. 

Plays not now attributed to Shake- 
speare, 72. 

Pott, Mrs. Constance, on Shakespeare's 
lack of description of country 
scenes, 436. 

Proposition, The, i. 

Quiney, Adrian, letter to Shaksper, 177. 
Quiney, Richard, letter to William 
Shaksper, 11, 17. 

Rankins on the Theatre and the Cur- 
tain, 112. 

Ratsies' Ghost; advice to a player, 50, 
268. 

Reed, Edwin, on the Prefatory Ad- 
dress of the Folio, 352. 

References or allusions to William Shak- 
sper, 259. 

Returne from Parnassus, lines believed 
to refer to player Shaksper, 295. 

Returne from Parnassus, mentions Mr. 
Shakespeare, 262. 

Returne from Parnassus, speaks of 
Shakespeare as poet, but not as play- 
writer, 325. 

Rogers, Prof. Thorold, on the lack of 
education in Shaksper's day, 446. 

Rolfe, Dr. W. J. Shakespere, the boy, 
in Youth's Companion, 24. 

Rolfe, Book of same name, 26. 

Rowe, Nicholas, 1709, notes on William 
Shaksper, 88. 

Ruggles, Henry J., on the familiarity of 
the author of the Shakespeare Plays 
with Bacon's philosophy, 227-229. 

Ruggles, Henry J., on the language of 
Shakespeare, 211. 

Rymer, Thomas, on the Shakespeare 
Plays, 330. 

Sala, Geo. A., Conviction that the wri- 
ter of the Shakespeare Plays had 
traveled in Italy, 238. 



Schlegel on Shakespeare, 226. 

Schoolmasters of Shaksper's day, 447. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, held in special ven- 
eration as a poet, 326. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, on the state of the 
drama in his time, 95. 

Signet ring marked W. S. shown at 
Stratford, 31. 

Shakespeare as a physicist and natural 
philosopher, 235. 

Shakespeare Plays, enlarged, etc., for 
the Folio, 311, 

Shakespeare Plays after the Restora- 
tion, 168, 169. 

Shakespeare Plays, few mentions of 
them in contemporary literature, 284. 

Shakespeare Plays, seventeen had been 
performed and seven printed anon- 
ymously up to 1598 — list of the latter, 
69. 

Shakespeare Plays, shortened for per- 
forming, 141. 

Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements, by 
Lord Campbell, 221. 

Shakespeare the name of a band or 
club of authors, 72. 

Shakespeare, William, evidences that 
he had traveled extensively, 237. 

Shakespeare, William, his familiarity 
with courts, etc., 244. 

Shakespeare, William, his knowledge of 
French, Italian, Spanish, 243. 

Shakespeare, William, ignorance of con- 
temporaries respecting, 335. 

Shakespeare, William, the name used 
on plays by many authors, 115, 

Shaksper, John, application for coat- 
armour, 186-188. 

Shaksper, John and Mary, absolutely 
illiterate, 12. 

Shaksper, John, butcher, after his mar- 
riage, I2,r33. 

Shaksper, John, fills several offices, 29. 

Shaksper, John, litigious, 30. 

Shaksper has no goods that could be dis- 
trained, 30. 

Shaksper, John, in prison for debt, 30. 

Shaksper, John, fined for having 
amassed a sterquinarium before his 
house, 15. 

Shaksper's, John, house at Strat- 
ford, 16. 

Shaksper, John, secretly attached to 
the Catholic religion, 115. 

Shaksper, John, tenant of Robert Ar- 
den, 62. 

Shaksper, John, marries Mary, Rob- 
ert's daughter, 62. 

Shaksper, John, though unable to write, 
made up the accounts of the bor- 
ough, 23. 

Shaksper, John, made his signature 
with a mark, 23. 



5o6 



INDEX. 



Shaksper, variations of the name, 7-11. 

Shaksper, William, as a business man, 
177-179. 

Shaksper, William, attempts at enclos- 
ure of the common land, 190. 

Shaksper, William, as a player, 174. 

Shaksper, William, buys a lot from 

• Henry Walker, 385. 

Shaksper, William, executes a mortgage 
deed on same, 385. 

Shaksper, William, apprenticed to a 
butcher; account of the old Stratford 
parish clerk, 34. 

Shaksper, William, died a papist, ac- 
cording to Vicar Davis, 115. 

Shaksper, William, did not go to Lon 
don with histrionic intentions, 49. 

Shaksper, William, discovered as a ris- 
ing actor and dramatist, according to 
Phillipps, in 1592, 53. 

Shaksper, William, doggerel verses on 
John-a-Combe, 53. 

Shaksper, William, Drake's version of 
his five signatures, 392. 

Shaksper, William, Dr. Rolfe on mar- 
riage of, 37. 

Shaksper, William, evidence of penu- 
riousness, 189. 

Shaksper, William, exercised his fa- 
ther's trade of butcher, according to 
Aubrey, 33. 

Shaksper, William, gaining a knowl- 
edge of the world at Stratford, 35. 

Shaksper, William, flies to Lendon, 39. 

Shaksper, William, his death, 379. 

Shaksper, William, his prosecution of 
debtors, 182. 

Shaksper, William, his signature to the 
counterpart of the Walker deed, 387, 
391. 

Shaksper, William, his signature to the 
Walker mortgage, 390. 

Shaksper, William, his visit to Bidford, 

3777 378- 
Shaksper, William, his Will, 380. 
Shaksper,',William, his vocabulary when 

he came to London, 195. 
Shaksper, William, language spoken 

on arrival at London, 193. 
Shaksper, William, married to Ann 

Whately, 36. 
Shaksper, William, no evidenee extant 

respecting his career from 1589 to 

1592, 53. 
Shaksper, William, no proof that he 

went to school in boyhood, 20. 
Shaksper, William, supposed to have 

left school at 13 years of age, 30. 
Shaksper, William, went to London at 

21 years of age, according to Halli- 

well-Phillipps ; at 22, according to 

R. G. White; at 23, according to 

Fleay, 49. 



Shaksper, William, wild in his younger 

days, according to Rowe, 37. 
Shaksper, William, words spoken to the 

town clerk of Stratford, 191. 
Shaksper, William, visits Stratford in 

1587, and not again till 1596, 52. 
Southampton, Lord, apochryphal story 

of a loan to Shaksper, 179. 
Spencer, Herbert, on heredity, 41. 
Spencer, Edmund, does not refer to 

Shaksper in Colin Clout, 266. 
Statue of William Shaksper in Cong. 

Library, 471. 
Statute of 39 Elizabeth and i James on 

players, 82. 
Steevens, George, on the number of 

copies of the first Folio edition of the 

Plays, 334. 
Stefansson, Jan, belief that the writer 

of Hamlet had visited Denmark, 238-' 
^ 241- 
Stotsenburg, Judge John H., on the 

Sonnets, 370. 
Stotsenburg, Judge John H., on the 

vocabulary of the Shakespeare Plays 

Stratford Free School, R. G. White on 

same, 21. 
Stratford-on-Avon, condition in 1564 and 

years following, 14. 
Stratford-on-Avon, no mention of in the 

plays, 431 
Stubbs, on the London theaters, 107. 
Swan Theater, De Witt's sketch of and 

description, 106. 
Swinburne, A. G., on] Marlowe's place 

and value among English poets, 68. 
Symonds, Prof. J. A., on the Doubtful 

Plays, 313. 
Symonds, Prof. J. A., on the London 

theaters, 113, 114. 
Symonds, Prof. J. A., Performances at 

Elizabethan Theater; a visit to the 

Fortune, 102, 114. 

Taine, on the English theaters, time of 

Elizabeth, 94. 
Tarleton, Richard, cut of, 61. 
Taylor, John, enumerates the poets, 

323- 
Theaters, Private, two only, 98, 99. 
Theobald, Dr. W., on Shakespeare's use 

of certain words, 203-207. 
Titus Andronicus, play of, 138, ei seq. 
The Chamberlain's company, 108. 
The Chandos portrait, 479. 
The Droeshout likeness of William 

Shaksper, 464-467. 
The dumb-show, 141. 
The Felton portrait, 473. 
The Flower portrait, 467-471. 
The Gower best likeness, 484. 
The Jansen portrait, 480. 



INDEX. 



507 



The Kesselstadt death-mask, 480-483. 
The King's Company, 108. 
The Old Geronimo, The play of, 140. 
The Othello, Quarto and Folio, 310. 
The Passionate Pilgrim, published as 

by Shakespeare, 72. 
The Shakespeare plays at court, 143. 
The Shakespeare plays not acted at any 

private theater, 121. 
The Shakespeare plays not acted at 

length at any public theater, 121. 
The Shakespeare plays not written for 

Shaksper's theater, 142, 143. 
The Sonnets, 363. 
The Stratford bust, 473-479. 
The theaters in London, 94 et seg. 
The Tragical Reign of Selim, The play 

of, 140. 
The Quarterly Review, on Shake- 
speare's unobservance of animated 

nature, 434-436. 
Thrale, Mrs., obloquy caused by her 

marriage with Piozzi, 87. 
Trench, on the maker of words, 200. 
The Zucharo portrait, 479. 

Venus and Adonis, publication of, in 

1593. 67- 
Vocabulary of the Shakespeare plays, 

195- 
Vocabulary of Milton's Works, 195. 

Wallace, Dr. A. R., accounts for the 
learning in the law of the Shakes- 
peare plays, 220. 

Wallace, Dr. A. R., as to how William 
Shaksper acquired a knowledge of 
high life, 248. 

Wallace, Dr. A. R., how Shaksper ac- 
quired knowledge, 453. 

Walpole, Horace, on genteel comedies, 

63- 

Ward, Rev. John A., result of his in- 
vestigations at Stratford, 422. 

Warner, Prof. B. E., on Shakespeare as 
a writer of History, 233. 

Warner, William, rank as a poet, 266. 

Warwickshire dialect, example of, 194. 

Warwickshire, few mentions of, in the 
plays, 431. 



Webster, Daniel, on acquisition of 
knowledge, 460. 

Webster, John, enumerates Shake- 
speare with other poets, 291. 

Webster, John, mention of several po- 
ets, 322. 

Weever, John, apostrophe to Shake- 
speare, 279. 

Weever, John, lines by, 73. 

Weismann, Dr. Aug., on uninstructed 
musical genius, 42. 

Wendell, Prof. Barrett, accounts for the 
Shakespeare vocabulary, 214. 

Wendell's characterization of the 
Elizabethan theaters, no. 

Wendell, Barrett, his play of Raleigh in 
Guiana, 342. 

Wendell, Barrett, on the apparent 
learning of the plays, 455. 

Wendell, Prof. Barrett, on the collabo- 
ration of Greene, Peele, Kyd and 
Marlowe in the Henry VI plays, 58. 

Whately, Ann, marries Shaksper, 36. 

White, R. G., on Shaksper's Will, 381. 

White, Richard Grant, on the learning 
in the law of the Shakespeare plays, 
219. 

White, R. G., Shaksper unknown to 
any one of note, 415. 

White, Rowland, letters, 361. 

White, Thos. W., on the authorship of 
the Shakespeare plays, 309. 

White, Thomas W., on the Venus and 
Adonis, that Marlowe wrote it, 68. 

White and Reed discover evidence of 
some great imposture on the stage 
in Shaksper's time, 296. 

Whittington, Thomas, loan of 40 shil- 
lings to Ann Shaksper, 52. 

Winter, William, on Shaksper's condi- 
tion when he made his Will, 380. 

Woncot, mention of, in the plays, 431. 

Wordsworth, Bishop Charles, on the 
life of Shakspere, 264. 

Wordsworth, Bishop, on Shakespeare 
and the Bible, 216, 217. 

Wotton, Sir Henry, absence of mention 
of Shaksper in correspondence, 414. 



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